Graham, John W. 1961-

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Graham, John W. 1961-

PERSONAL:

Born February 25, 1961, in Champaign, IL; son of John Patrick (an advertising executive) and JoAnn (a bookkeeper) Graham; married Wendy C. Havlick (a librarian and writer), August 15, 1987. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, B.A., 1983, M.S., 1984. Religion: United Methodist.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Cincinnati, OH. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Tulsa City-County Library, Tulsa, OK, reference librarian for business and technology department, 1984-86, fee-based research librarian, 1986-89; Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Cincinnati, OH, public documents librarian, 1989-90, assistant manager of government and business department, 1990-97, manager of public documents and patents department, 1997-2005, manager of government and business department, 2005-07, creator of Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Web site, 2000; Fidelity Investments, Covington, KY, customer service representative, 2007—. Coproducer of the television documentary Gold Star Mothers: Pilgrimage of Remembrance, produced by WILL-TV, 2003, and broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service, 2004; public speaker. U.S. Government Printing Office, member of Depository Library Council, 2003-06.

MEMBER:

Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Included among best legal reference books of the year, Law Library Journal, 1993, for The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: A Research and Information Guide.

WRITINGS:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: A Research and Information Guide, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1993.

(With wife, Wendy C. Havlick) Mission Statements: A Guide to the Corporate and Nonprofit Sectors, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Wendy C. Havlick) Corporate Environmental Policies, Scarecrow Press (Lanham, MD), 1999.

The Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages of the 1930s: Overseas Grave Visitations by Mothers and Widows of Fallen U.S. World War I Soldiers, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 2005.

Contributor to professional journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

John W. Graham told CA: "My work as a librarian inspired all the books and articles I've done. My first book, The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: A Research and Information Guide is a reference book, pure and simple. My next two books were coauthored with my wife, Wendy C. Havlick. During the pre-World Wide Web days of the early 1990s, I encountered many library users who had trouble finding sample company mission statements. There was really no good option to finding a large collection of these, so Wendy and I decided to compile a reference book to fill the bill. We really enjoyed working on Mission Statements: A Guide to the Corporate and Nonprofit Sectors. We sent out several thousand letters asking corporations to send us their statements, along with the permission to include them in our book. It was fun when we would come home from work and find as many as a dozen mission statements waiting for us in the mail. The book sold well and got good reviews. Our next book together presented the complete text of 237 corporate environmental policy statements. This book didn't sell particularly well; the World Wide Web doomed compilation reference books. The trend of environmental management is still quite active; perhaps the book was just ahead of its time.

"The inspiration for The Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages of the 1930s: Overseas Grave Visitations by Mothers and Widows of Fallen U.S. World War I Soldiers came through pure serendipity. In 1998 I was looking up some information in an index to Congressional publications when I ran across several references to ‘pilgrimages.’ Curious, I retrieved a few of these documents, and I was hooked instantly. The pilgrimages were trips for mother and widows of World War I soldiers to visit the graves of their husbands and sons in Europe. From 1930 to 1933 the U.S. government planned and conducted trips for over 6,500 mothers and widows to visit America's World War cemeteries in Belgium, England, and France. My library had a wonderful collection of books, government documents, newspapers, and other resources, so it made the research process much easier for me.

"What I enjoyed most about this book was the research. To be specific, it was uncovering connections among everyday people and historic events. For example, I found the published diaries of Charles Dawes, the American ambassador to England during the first part of the pilgrimages. He devoted a very tender page to describing the unaffected and ‘natural’ mothers who came to visit their sons' graves.

"Working on this book, which is all about mourning and loss, was a very personal and even emotional experience for me. When I began the research, both my parents were alive. When the book was published, both had passed away. As an only child, I had an especially close relationship with both of them.

"In a closely related item, I served as coproducer of a documentary on these pilgrimages. I was introduced to producer Alison Davis Wood in 1999. Although I was only a few months into the research for my book, Alison was instantly interested in starting the project. Over the next four years, we filmed over a dozen interviews in several states and mined the collections of the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The final product, I must say, is really terrific. I know I was very lucky to get this project produced, and it was a privilege to work with Alison and all her colleagues at WIIL-TV."