Morningside College Professor Steve Gates recently gave a presentation on the experiences of his great-grandfather during the Civil War at the Missouri Valley History Conference in Omaha, Neb.

Morningside College Professor Steve Gates recently gave a presentation on the experiences of his great-grandfather during the Civil War at the Missouri Valley History Conference in Omaha, Neb.

The presentation, “Remembering a Civil War Veteran: The Shape of Memory and Its Intersection of History,” discussed the experience of Civil War veteran Charles A. Gates at the Battle of Savage’s Station. Steve Gates has been conducting research on his great-grandfather’s experiences for the past 30 years.

“The journey was inspired by the set of letters he left us, during the war, to describe his experience. My work has been an ongoing search for the experiences in his life that shaped what he wrote,” Gates said.

The journey took him to his great-grandfather’s home in rural upstate New York, to the streets of Alexandria, Va., to several battlefields and to Washington, D.C., where his great-grandfather camped before and between campaigns.

Steve Gates is a professor of education and the chair of the graduate program in education at Morningside College, where he joined the faculty in 2016. He holds a doctorate in English education from the University of Iowa in Iowa City.