Pilgrimage of Remembrance

John W. Graham

Author Biography

John W. Graham is the author of the new book, Gold Star Mothers Pilgrimages of the 1930s: Overseas War Graves Visitation, published in 2005 by McFarland & Company. He has spent over five years researching and writing about the pilgrimages.

John is the Department Manager of the Government and Business Department at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, a position he has held since 1997. He first stumbled across the pilgrimages while using the Congressional and War Department documents in his department, one of the oldest and most complete government document depositories among public libraries in the nation.

John is the co-producer of the award-winning PBS documentary Pilgrimage of Remembrance. Released in 2003 by WILL-TV at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the one hour documentary tells the story of the Gold Star mother pilgrimages to Europe. It aired nationwide on PBS stations during 2003 and 2004. Alison Davis Wood produced the documentary. For more information or to order a copy, visit WILL-TV's website.

John is the author of one previous book and the co-author of two others. His first book was The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: a Research and Information Guide (Garland Publishing, 1993.) Along with Wendy C. Havlick, he wrote Mission Statements: a Guide to the Corporate and Nonprofit Sectors (Garland Publishing, 1994) and Corporate Environmental Policies (Scarecrow Press, 1999).

John has given numerous book talks and video presentations on the pilgrimages. He has published an article on the pilgrimages. He is at work on a novel in diary form about the pilgrimages aimed at a young adult audience.

John W. Graham was born in Champaign, Illinois, in 1961. He graduated with a B.A. in American Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983. He received his M.S. in Library and Information Science from Illinois in 1984.