Leckie, Shirley A. 1937- (Shirley Anne Leckie)

PERSONAL:

Born June 15, 1937, in Claremont, NH; daughter of Edward (a farmer) and Hazel Howard; married Matthew J. Swora, 1956 (marriage ended, 1972); married William H. Leckie (a university administrator and writer), December 26, 1975; children: (first marriage) Mathew Swora, Kimberly Swora Beck, Maria Gabrielle. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: University of Missouri—Kansas City, B.A., 1967, M.A., 1969; University of Toledo, Ph.D., 1981. Politics: Democrat. Hobbies and other interests: Swimming, movies, concerts, music.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Winter Springs, FL. Office—Department of History, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, academic advisor, 1972-77, coordinator of adult liberal studies, 1974-77, director of external affairs and adult liberal studies, 1977-80, assistant dean of continuing education for business and professional seminars, 1980-81; Millsaps College, Jackson, MS, assistant professor of history and associate dean of continuing education, 1981-82; University of North Carolina at Asheville, director of continuing education and special programs, 1983-85; University of Central Florida, Orlando, assistant professor, 1985-88, associate professor, 1988-95, professor of history, 1995—, assistant dean, 1997-98, past president of United Faculty of Florida. Orlando Metropolitan Women's Political Caucus, secretary, 1988-89, and member. Member of editorial board, Northwest Ohio Quarterly, 1994-98, and Western Historical Quarterly, 1995-98.

MEMBER:

Organization of American Historians, Western History Association, Southern Historical Association, Coalition for Western Women's History, Phi Alpha Theta.

AWARDS, HONORS:

David Woolley and Beatrice Cannon Evans Biography Award, and Julian J. Rothbaum Prize, both 1993, History Book Club Selection, all for Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth. Choice "outstanding academic book" citation, 1990, for The Colonel's Lady on the Western Frontier; award from Oklahoma Historical Society, 2001, for Angie Debo, Pioneering Historian; Angie Debo Prize for the best book on the history of the Southwest, 2002.

WRITINGS:

(With husband, William H. Leckie) Unlikely Warriors: General Benjamin H. Grierson and His Family, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1984.

(Editor) The Colonel's Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1989.

Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1993.

Angie Debo, Pioneering Historian, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 2000.

(With William H. Leckie) The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the West, revised edition, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 2003.

(Editor, with Bruce J. Dinges) A Just and Righteous Cause: Benjamin H. Grierson's Civil War Memoir, Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 2008.

(Editor, with Nancy J. Parezo, and coauthor of introduction) Their Own Frontier: Women Intellectuals Re-visioning the American West, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2008.

Work represented in anthologies. Contributor of articles and reviews to history and education journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Shirley A. Leckie once told CA: "Writing is the most difficult task I undertake. While I pick a topic because it interests me initially, I do not love it until I have spent long hours of drudgery, forcing myself to write and rewrite. The research, by contrast, is much easier. If I am not careful, I will do too much, as a way of postponing the hard work of actually sitting down and trying to decide what it is I really think and want to say. I never know, myself, until I have rewritten my work many times.

"One day, after many tedious hours, the work takes on a life of its own. From then on, although it is still hard, writing is no longer drudgery. It becomes what I love to do as I discover more about who my subjects are and what their world was like. When I am finished, I have said goodbye to a beloved friend, and I feel a sense of bereavement.

"Eventually I undertake another biography. Living with a person from the past is essential to me, for it helps me overcome my neurosis. It enables me to put my present world into perspective as I live from day to day, wondering what mysteries will be solved at the computer, what new discoveries will be made, and what new understandings will be achieved. I am grateful to my subjects for leaving enough of themselves behind so that I have been able to enter into their lost worlds and gain, however briefly and imperfectly, some sense of who they were. Whatever the sales or reviews of my work, the process of writing—the work itself—is my best reward."

Leckie later added: "I hope that the books I have written will bring greater recognition to the role of women and minorities in the history of the American West."