Teddy's Child

During and after World War II, VIRGINIA VAN DER VEER HAMILTON became a pioneer in journalism and academe—two careers in which only a small minority of women then participated. Hired as a typist in the Washington, DC bureau of The Associated Press (AP), she rose to become the AP reporter for the "women's beat" at the Truman White House. While a wife and mother, she became the second woman to earn a PhD from the History Department of The University of Alabama. She taught at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, chaired its history department for ten years and wrote eight award-winning books as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals, American Heritage, and The New York Times.

For someone who has vital connections to the Kentucky Bluegrass, New Orleans, and Birmingham, as I do, Virginia Hamilton’s Teddy’s Child: Growing Up in the Anxious Southern Gentry Between the Great Wars is finest candy. I simply couldn’t stop eating—I mean reading. For anyone who is aware that family members, through several generations, re-live many of the same life patterns, despite changes in time and place, this book is a serious “must read.” With the insight and honesty of a historian, Virginia Hamilton examines the romanticism, the neuroses, the joie de vivre, the talents, and the grit of her own family in a way that helps any reader understand better his or her own family’s tendencies. Teddy’s Child includes many fascinating characters remarkable for their beauty, athleticism, leadership ability, eccentricities and literary inclinations; their individual lives and entire eras are made vivid by newspaper clippings, family photographs, letters, and journals, as well as through Hamilton's memories and compelling descriptions. Coming to know Virginia Hamilton's heritage has thoroughly entertained me while enriching my own sense of family and of growing up in Birmingham.