Arnie's Background

I wanted to be a historian since well back in my childhood.  In pursuit of this ambition I got a Ph.D. in history at Yale.  My dissertation was published as a book, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (University of North Carolina Press, 1979).  Unfortunately the job market for college history teachers went completely into the toilet around the time I finished graduate school, and after a couple of temporary teaching gigs I recognized reality and became a researcher/planner for the first of four agencies of the State of Connecticut. 

I never lost the historical bug, but in the 1990's I also got into storytelling.  I told folktales, personal experience stories, and some literary classics (O.Henry, Ring Lardner). A few years ago I inherited my father's army footlocker, and that became the main focus of my historical and storytelling efforts.

In what I sometimes call the "Bop Project" ("Bop" or "Boppa" is what our daughters called my father) I have to try and reconcile three roles. First I'm a historian, trying to portray the past as accurately as I can - including the passions, hopes, and fears as well as the names, places, and dates. Second, like any decent historian I'm a storyteller, trying to connect with audience members in a way that means something to them.

Third, I'm also a son;  I can't pretend that I'm able to look at my father's story with totally objective scholarly detachment.  Obviously, that influences how I shape the story; in how I decide what is important and what isn't.  In some places it helps; I can understand some things that someone who didn't know my father might not.

It's largely because I did know my father that I am comfortable with the roles of historian and storyteller.  I know that he would want me to present his experiences as truthfully as I can - not hiding the times when he was afraid, discouraged, confused, or regretful.  Like any historian or storyteller I shape what I tell, but my goal as much as I can is to get myself out of the way and let my father tell his own story. 


Arnie Pritchard
19 Colony Road
New Haven, CT 06511

203-624-2520
email arnie