Joe Owen is a National Park Ranger at Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park in Johnson City, Texas. Having served 15 years in the U.S, Navy, he attended college at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma receiving a Bachelor' s Degree in History and a Master's Degree in Secondary Education. He taught Social Studies for eight years in Oklahoma, Texas and Oregon before working for the National Park Service. He is a co-author of two books about Hood's Texas Brigade, Texans At Gettysburg: Blood and Glory with Hood's Texas Brigade, (2016), Texans at Antietam: A Terrible Clash of Arms, September 16-17, 1862, (2017), and is the author of Lone Star Valor: Texans of the Blue and Gray at Gettysburg (2019.) He received the Jefferson Davis Gold Medal from the United Daughters of the Confederacy for outstanding research and writing in 2019.
Stephen M. “Sam” Hood is a retired industrial contractor living in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He is a graduate of Kentucky Military Institute and Marshall University, and served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. Sam is the author of The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood and John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General, winner of the 2014 Albert E. Castel and Walt Whitman Book of the Year Awards. He is a past president of the board of directors of the Confederate Memorial Hall Museum Foundation in New Orleans. A former youth, high school, and college soccer coach, Sam was twice named West Virginia High School Soccer Coach of the Year and is a member of the West Virginia Soccer Hall of Fame.
