Welch, Bob 1954-

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Welch, Bob 1954-

PERSONAL: Born 1954; married, wife's name Sally; children: two sons. Education: Graduated from University of Oregon, 1976.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—P.O. Box 70785, Eugene, OR 97401. Office—The Register-Guard, P. O. Box 10188, Eugene, OR 97440.

CAREER: Register-Guard (newspaper), Eugene, OR, columnist and features editor; University of Oregon, Eugene, adjunct professor of journalism.

AWARDS, HONORS: Various honors from National Society of Newspaper Columnists; C. B. Blethen Award for distinguished feature writing, Seattle Times; Best Writing Award, Oregon Newspaper Publisher Association.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Bellevue and the New Eastside: A Contemporary Portrait, Windsor Publications (Chatsworth, CA), 1989.

More to Life Than Having It All, Harvest House (Eugene, OR), 1992.

A Father for All Seasons, Harvest House (Eugene, OR), 1998.

Where Roots Grow Deep, Harvest House (Eugene, OR), 1999.

Stories from the Game of Life, Harvest House (Eugene, OR), 2000.

The Things That Matter Most, Harvest House (Eugene, OR), 2001.

American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor of columns to magazines, including Reader's Digest and Sports Illustrated.

SIDELIGHTS: Oregon-based newspaper columnist Bob Welch is the author of American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy. Frances Slanger was born into a Jewish family in Poland shortly before the outbreak of World War I, and after the war, when Slanger was seven years old, her family fled to the United States. Slanger spent the rest of her childhood in Boston, and as a young adult she studied to become a nurse. When World War II broke out Slanger wanted to do something to help, so she joined the Army Nurse Corps, and became part of the first group of nurses to land in Normandy after D-Day. A few months later, she was unable to sleep as she lay in bed at the 45th Field Hospital in Belgium, so she instead wrote a letter to the Army newspaper, the Stars and Stripes. In this letter, Slanger praised the soldiers she had met and treated for their courage and determination. The Stars and Stripes published the letter seventeen days later, but Slanger did not live to see it; the night after she wrote it, she became the first American nurse to be killed in Europe. Welch "gives a vivid account of the German shelling of the field hospital in which Slanger was killed," Danielle Giovannelli wrote in Army, and "a moving description of her death." American Nightingale is "a heartwarming story for all ages," Frieda Murray concluded in Booklist.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Army, February, 2005, Danielle Giovannelli, review of American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy, p. 94.

Booklist, June 1, 2004, Frieda Murray, review of American Nightingale, p. 1696.

Boston Globe, June 6, 2004, Avi Steinberg, "'An Extraordinary Woman' Recalled" (review of American Nightingale), p. 5.

Library Journal, August, 2004, Elizabeth Morris, review of American Nightingale, p. 97.

Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), November 11, 2004, Sheila Stroup, "A Real Hero Isn't Always on Battlefield" (review of American Nightingale), p. 1.