NOTE: Program Updated January, 2020

Ron Kirkwood is the author of “Too Much for Human Endurance: The George Spangler Farm Hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg,” which was published by Savas Beatie in hardcover in June 2019 and went into its second printing in October.

Kirkwood will discuss in his presentation why logistically the George Spangler farm was the most important farm in the Battle of Gettysburg. He also will tell the stories of the Spanglers and the surgeons, nurses, wounded and mortally wounded at the two hospitals on the Spanglers’ land during and after the battle and reveal new information about the last three days of Confederate Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Armistead’s life, which he spent at Spangler. Kirkwood also will highlight the 153rd Pennsylvania throughout his talk.

Kirkwood is retired after a 40-year career as an editor and writer in newspapers and magazines including USA TODAY, the Baltimore Sun, the Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News, and the York (PA) Daily Record. He edited national magazines for USA TODAY Sports and was National Football League editor for USA TODAY Sports Weekly. He won numerous state, regional and national writing and editing awards during his career and managed the copy desk in Harrisburg when the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. Kirkwood is a Michigan native and graduate of Central Michigan University, where he has returned as guest speaker to journalism classes as part of the school’s Hearst Visiting Professionals series.

Kirkwood has been a Gettysburg Foundation guide at the George Spangler Farm Civil War Field Hospital Site since it opened in 2013. He lives in York with his wife of 43 years, Barbara.