Dr. Joel Rhodes
Host - Sesquicentennial Moments, Telling HistoryJoel P. Rhodes is a Professor in the History Department of Southeast Missouri State University. Raised in Kansas, he earned a B.S. in Education from the University of Kansas before earning his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
His teaching and research interests are in Cold War-era American political and social history and the history of children and childhood. Dr. Rhodes has written The Sixties in the Lives of American Children: Growing Up in a Land Called Honalee, The Voice of Violence: Performative Violence as Protest in the Vietnam Era, and A Missouri Railroad Pioneer: the Life of Louis Houck. An avid storytelling enthusiast, he has also written Haunted Cape Girardeau: Where the River Turns a Thousand Chilling Tales and co-authored Historic Cape Girardeau: an Illustrated History. His articles and chapters have appeared in On the Ground: The Black Panther Party in Communities Across America, Girlhood in America: An Encyclopedia, and the Missouri Historical Review. Dr. Rhodes has also delivered papers at the American Historical Association (AHA) annual meeting, and international conferences hosted by the Society for the History of Children and Youth (SHCY) and the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past (SSCIP). He is currently researching and writing a book on the Vietnam War in the lives of American children.
Dr. Rhodes serves, or has served, on a number of Boards of Directors including the Missouri Humanities Council, the State Historical Records Advisory Board (appointed by Governor Jay Nixon), Missouri Association for Museums and Archives, National Digital Newspaper Program in Missouri Advisory Board, Colonial Fox Theatre Foundation (Pittsburg, Kansas), The Historical Association of Greater Cape Girardeau, The Stars & Stripes Museum/Library Association, and co-produced the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival.
He lives in Cape Girardeau with his wife Jeanie and his three children.
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The 1977 bestseller “The Complete Book of Running” begins with author Jim Fixx’s solemn purpose: “first, to introduce you to the extraordinary world of running, and second, to change your life.” -
“If you need to stop an asteroid, you call Superman,” comic book writer Gail Simone observed. “If you need to solve a mystery, you call Batman. But if you need to end a war, you call Wonder Woman.” -
Midway through a frenetic third period, American Mark Pavelich passed the hockey puck to teammate Mike Eruzione, who buried a shot into the Soviet net. -
The sound of young America, Motown. With a vast galaxy of stars orbiting Detroit, visionary Berry Gordy, Jr. put the soul into the 1960s. -
“If possible, I believe we should ‘coin a phrase’ for the Championship Game,” Kansas City Chiefs’ owner Lamar Hunt observed on the eve of the first title matchup in 1967 between his AFL champion Chiefs and the NFL champion Green Bay Packers. -
“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Now, as a Kansan born and raised, like most, I’m ambivalent about that classic cinematic observation. -
‘Twas a time before Amazon and all through fall, American children feverishly devoured every page of newly arrived Sears, JCPenney, and Montgomery Ward Christmas catalogs. -
Once President Lyndon Johnson brought U.S. power to bear in Vietnam, America’s military build-up required substantial increases in draft calls. -
Besides the moon, there was another parallel race against the Russians in the Cold War. -
“No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist… he has too much to do” quipped builder Bill Levitt, whose massive Levittown subdivision in Long Island, New York, was the largest housing project in American history at the time.
