Fact Checker – A Wrap-up to LATOBSD

Chapter Twenty

CLOSURE

(From the desk of Gwendolyn Kim Hoff)

A personal tour guide to deciphering the fact and fiction behind
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A BLACK SOUTHERN DOCTOR;
genre of Historical Fiction.

Well readers, here we find ourselves, at the end of a book that
may have elicited one of the following reactions:

• Surprise
•  Dismay
•  Confusion
•  Confounded-ness
•  Conflicted-ness

‘Pleased’ is my wish, but there is quite a twist from where you
thought things were headed. Was not A.O. Campbell tried and
convicted, in a court of law, of the things we read of in Chapter One?
In real life, sadly he was, pretty much the way Chapter 1 ALPHA AND OMEGA was laid out.

I myself met the granddaughter of the doctor, more than a dozen
years ago. She found out that I was writer and as many of us who set
words to page are told, ‘I have a great story that needs to be told.’ I

____364 Gwendolyn Hoff

happened to be between projects and thus began a journey that has
led me to this point.

In my files are pictures, articles and memorabilia from the life of
this Southern Black Doctor. Legendary is the word that can describe
what I have accumulated, in filed away in my office at this
moment. So much, not all of what I have written is flat-out true or to the best of my knowledge; people, places and things littered from 1896 to 1955. In fact, had I been true to the facts, we would have continued on from Chapter One in order, all the way to 1959.

To be continued………

“Recently, like a couple of days ago, I received a comment from a relative of a relative of the doctor. She was appalled and clearly in the “dismayed” segment of my readers, I believe blasting through WIF archives to read on about A.O. Campbell’s LIFE AND TIMES.

“To Pat H. and anyone else connected to Tallahassee Florida in the 1940s & 50s, it was a sad time, it was a bad time in the life of a good and decent man. And had I been able to dig up some willing family historians, LATOBSD, this piece of historical fiction may well have more closely reflected what really happened.

“But those  folks were nowhere to be found, just like the suddenly mute nurses who were witness to the whole Audrey Franich affair.”

Gwenny

Fact Checker – A Wrap-up to LATOBSD