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Remembering Kevin Young

5/7/2013

4 Comments

 
Picture
Some people you don't forget, even if you barely knew them.  Kevin R. Young, who died a year ago today, is one of those people for me.
     I met Kevin in San Antonio in March of 2011, during the weekend-long celebration of the 175th anniversary of the Alamo.  One afternoon I squeezed into a small car with him and three other new acquaintances who cared deeply about the Alamo, heading for the Odd Fellows Cemetery on Powder House Hill.  (It's a long story, but some of the ashes of the defenders -- just possibly including David Crockett's -- ended up there.)  
     The photo shows Kevin standing next to a historical marker commemorating the "Lost Burial Place of the Alamo Defenders."  No, he couldn't tell me whether Crockett's remains really were on Powder House Hill.  But I soon realized that Kevin Young knew pretty much everything else about Texas history -- and had a sense of humor about it, too.  
     I won't try to replicate that humor, except to say that I soon found myself referring to the Battle of Lexington as "the Gonzales of Massachusetts."  But I will say that Kevin -- who spent much of his life as a historical interpreter and researcher, at Goliad's Presidio La Bahia among other places -- was incredibly generous with his knowledge.  He sent me old maps, dug out unpublished documents from his files, and cheerfully answered as many Alamo questions as I tossed his way.  Over the years, I've since learned, he did the same for many, many others. 
     After Kevin died suddenly last spring, his friend Lee Spencer White organized a San Antonio memorial service for him; it took place on Powder House Hill.  Lee also wrote a moving remembrance of Kevin in the Alamo Studies Review; you can find a link to it here.  
        
         


4 Comments
Jay Anna Cherry
5/7/2013 11:44:09 pm

Like the Alamo itself...Keven will be remembered!!!

Reply
lee white
7/24/2015 12:02:11 pm

Reply
Jay
7/24/2015 12:52:26 pm

Miss Kevin

Reply
Adrian link
4/17/2019 02:05:42 pm

Kevin was so great.

Reply



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    Author

    Bob Thompson spent 24 years as a writer and editor  at the Washington Post, where he often wrote about the intersection of history and myth.  Born on  a Mountaintop is his first book.  As he explains in chapter one, it never would have been written if his beloved daughters hadn't been introduced to "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" at an impressionable age.   

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