Tom Culbert is the featured speaker for the Oct. 10 presentation of the Thursdays at the U series at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire – Barron County.
Tom Culbert
He will present “Across the Sahara with Pan Am in 1941” from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the Blue Hills Lecture Hall in Ritzinger Hall. The talk also will be livestreamed at ricelaketv.com.
Culbert will share an overview of his book, “Pan Africa: Across the Sahara in 1941 with Pan Am,” which describes the never-before-published true story of American civilians deployed in August 1941 by Pan Am to work in the war zone in Africa. These Americans provided direct support to the British Royal Air Force’s war effort prior to the U.S. entry into World War II. After Dec. 7, 1941, the men of Pan Am-Africa supported the Allies’ war efforts across the globe.
Born and raised in Eau Claire, Culbert entered the U.S. Air Force in 1970 through the ROTC program at UW-Superior. After serving for several years as an instructor pilot in the B-52G aircraft, he was selected to be one of a small group of U.S. Air Force officers trained as “Africanists,” spending more than five years as a diplomat-pilot working and living in Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, Ghana, Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso.
The Thursdays at the U weekly series is free and open to the public thanks to support from the UW-Eau Claire – Barron County Foundation. Neither seating reservations nor parking permits are needed for in-person attendees.
Although in-person attendance is encouraged, most talks in the series are livestreamed. They also are archived and can be watched later on the Thursdays at the U webpage.
The next lecture in the series will be Oct. 17, with Allie Musolf and Sarah Wittrock presenting “Domestic Violence: Personal & Factual.”
For more information, contact Laura Holden at 715-788-6207 or holdenlk@uwec.edu.
