Kansas City area author and historian Joe H. Vaughan will be speaking at the Downtown Kansas City, Kansas, Kiwanis Club at noon Thursday, Oct. 11.
Downtown Kiwanis meets in the conference room of the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau Offices at 755 Minnesota Ave.
At 10 a.m. Friday, Oct. 19, Vaughan will be presenting and signing books at the monthly Shepherd’s Center of Kansas City, Kansas “Adventures in Learning” group at Grace Lutheran Church, 3333 Wood Ave., Kansas City, Kansas.
Vaughan has released a new history book entitled, “Colonel Wilkinson’s Diary, A Kansas Doctor in World War I.” Colonel Hugh Wilkinson, M. D., was born and raised in Seneca, Kansas. The doctor was a Kansas City, Kansas, surgeon whose offices were in the Brotherhood Building on Minnesota Avenue.
He volunteered for service in the “Great War” and kept a diary of his tour of duty. Wilkinson served at Walter Reed Army Hospital, in France and was discharged with the rank of colonel. He resumed his surgical practice in Kansas City, Kansas.
Vaughan is the late colonel’s grandson. The two men never met. Dr. Wilkinson died some two decades before author and historian Vaughan was born. This is the final year of four years of activities to commemorate 100 years since World War 1 occurred between 1914 and 1918.