B16: The Anecdotal Winston Churchill and His American Mother, Jennie - 3 units
C. Brian Kelly and Ingrid Smyer-Kelly
Mon. 3:00–4:30 p.m. - Oct. 27, Nov. 3, 10, 17 
Meadows Presbyterian Church - Limit: 45

C. Brian Kelly has been teaching journalism at UVa as a lecturer since 1980. Before that he was a newspaper reporter and occasional free-lance writer for 20 years. In 1989 he and his wife, Ingrid, began self-publishing their Best Little Stories line of historical books, now a series of eight published by Cumberland House of Nashville. Number nine, to be published in the fall of 2008, is about Winston Churchill.

Ingrid Smyer-Kelly has been a civic activist and free-lance writer for years, contributing sections about women to the Best Little Stories book series and writing the material about Churchill’s American mother, Jennie Jerome, for that upcoming book. Ingrid is on the board of directors for the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center of Virginia and serves on the Charlottesville-Albemarle Historical Task Force.

Strictly anecdotal, the classes will begin with Churchill’s dramatic early years, move on to his rise and fall politically, followed by his so-called “wilderness” years, then to the famous WWII period, and finally to his after-years. Ingrid will talk about Churchill’s American mother, Jennie Jerome, a very colorful character herself.