Previous

Return to Gallery

Next

Squire Boone

I met my wife in 1969 after my return home from the service.  I was having some problems with my eyes after coming home from the jungles in Vietnam.  My mom made an appointment with her Eye Doctor, and that’s when I met the love of my life.  I only knew her 8 days before I asked her to marry me, and when she kissed me, laughed and then asked ‘what took me so long’ I knew then that I’d made a great choice and that’s been 38 ½ years, 3 children and 5 grandchildren ago.

In fact when Nancy and I first got married in September of 1969, I think our honeymoon was spent at Friendship, Indiana.  When our children were young and in school, they came home so discouraged about American History, due to a lousy history teacher. 

They thought history was nothing more than dates an a few facts thrown in. So we started taking them to various historical sites, such as the recreated Fort Boonesborough, the Blue Licks Battleground State Park.

Anyhow they started finding out that history was about real people who had their own stories, many living and dying on the grounds where we stood. Then we found out about something that was fairly new being done, at least we thought so at that point, and that was reenactments of important historical events from local history.

Well now, my love of history actually went back long before that, but what really first got me into history big time was when Walt Disney's 'Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter' 1st aired on my birthday in December of 1954, and I was 8 years old that day.  I became infatuated with history, and especially with Davy Crockett, the Alamo, and Jim Bowie, and was begging to get anything on those subjects.  

I was one of the 1st kids to get a coonskin cap too.  In fact I had the opportunity to fire my 1st flintlock rifle gun a little less than four years later in 1958 while squirrel hunting behind my parents house.  I felt like David Crockett, and I was hooked, line and sinker.  Only a few years before, I’d had the privilege of seeing Fess Parker as Davy Crockett (all 5 episodes I might add), and then after learning all I could about David Crockett and the Alamo, and now getting to actually shoot a rifle gun like Fess Parker had used in the film, my goodness, it was almost more than my young heart could take.

Then one day we met someone we knew who was reenacting at the Battle of the Blue Licks.  Of course it was anything but accurate back then but then we were invited to get involved and suddenly I felt and remembered my childhood days again, thought of the picture of Fess Parker as David Crockett, later his Daniel Boone series on TV, which we watched almost religiously (LOL), and I was hooked again.

Nancy & myself have been reenacting now about 30+ years and have been doing 1st person presentations for about 8 years. We are so proud when we can help bring someone back to history, young or old alike. We are hoping to get our DVDs remade by a dear friend hopefully sometime this year, but until then, if they help anyone, young or old, then it's worth it.  Anyways, that's our story about how we got started in reenacting.

Mike & Nancy

http://www.rumpingproductions.com 
"Kentucke, situated on the fertile banks of the great Ohio,
rising from obscurity to shine with splendor, equal to any
other of the stars of the American hemisphere." ......

John Filson