Sharing Speakers Makes Sense

By Greg Biggs · Originally published April 2016 · p. 2

Sharing Speakers Makes Sense If you stop to look at it, running a Civil War roundtable is exactly like running a small business. You take in money from members (your customers) via dues; find a product to sell to them (your speakers) so they keep coming back and then market your business to attract new customers (promoting your CWRT). Thus, like all businesses, costs are always a concern. Some CWRTs have huge budgets because they have lots of members. Others have 20 to 40 members and have a hard time spending on a big name speaker to help draw in new members whereas the big ones have no problem getting in the biggest names in the Civil War business. So how does this get solved? Before I answer a little history is in order. I began in the CWRT movement while living in California in the 1980s. I joined the Long Beach and Los Angeles CWRTs in 1988. After moving to Ohio in 1992, I co-founded a CWRT in the small town of Celina. We grew to about 35 members but even with that we could not afford to bring in an Ed Bearss, Gary Gallagher, Gary Joiner, etc. as we would never really have the treasury to do so. Yet several years later we did bring in Ed Bearss, Will Greene and the late Jerry Russell among a few others. How did we do this? We did so by sharing these speakers with other CWRTs in our area. We worked with Dayton, Columbus, Fort Wayne, Hamilton and Cincinnati at times to share speakers. We met on the same week of the month on different nights, so it was very easy to work these things out with other CWRTs in our area. We were no more than two hours from any of these CWRTs, so distance was not a concern. I “borrowed” the idea from the CWRTs down in Texas who worked along these lines sharing speakers between Dallas, Waco, Houston and even the New Orleans CWRT. It has worked for them for many years and continues to do so. Charles Nunez, who programs the New Orleans CWRT, tells me that they continue to work with these CWRTs and are happy to do so as it helps everyone save money and obtain great speakers. I moved to Tennessee in 2003 and contacted Jim Lewis of the Middle Tennessee CWRT in Murfreesboro beforehand. Finding out they met the third Tuesday of each month, I then decided to establish the Clarksville CWRT on the third Wednesday. Clarksville and Middle Tennessee shared numerous speakers over the years splitting their travel costs between them with each CWRT covering the hotel and dinner in their respective towns. When the Nashville CWRT began a few years ago on the third Monday, we had another CWRT to work with. The trend continued with the Bowling Green, KY CWRT starting on the third Thursday and then that was followed by the Fort Donelson CWRT over in Dover, TN also taking that night. Lastly, with the Southern Indiana CWRT up in Evansville, only 2 hours north of Clarksville also being the third Thursday, establishing a sharing relationship with them also made sense. Tom Murray, program chair of the Southern Indiana CWRT loves the relationship that has been built. He writes, “The Southern Indiana Civil War Roundtable traces its history back to the Evansville Civil War Roundtable, which met monthly for dinner/programs in the early 1960’s. These popular social dinner/ programs were held in the historic old Evansville Coliseum. Many august guests have spoken here.” “Over the years, the roundtable popularity waned, and the dinners were discontinued. The roundtable continued to meet but in much smaller settings with less and less attendance. A resurgence of interest occurred with the Ken Burn’s Civil War series, and the name was changed to The Southern Indiana CWRT, but again began to decline in membership as older members began to step away due to age, and the lessening in the popularity of the Civil War history.” “As these members departed, it became difficult to find younger and newer members who demonstrated the same level of knowledge or desire to research and present a program. Bringing higher quality guest speakers into our corner of southern Indiana put stress on our meager budget, as some compensation was expected for those who traveled some distance to get here.” “In an effort to attract speakers of a higher caliber, expand the studies into all theaters and even help attract new members, I discussed working with Greg Biggs, who was instrumental in establishing RT’s in the Clarksville and Nashville, Tennessee areas, the possibility of our RT’s meeting in the same week, although at different nights, and combining our efforts to bringing in notable speakers, historians, and authors to share during the week. Although individual RT’s would bear the expense of hosting a speaker overnight, the essential travel expense, i.e. airfare in some cases, would be shared by the roundtables. It was agreed, and four RT’s became the basis for the initial endeavor, each meeting on one night from Monday to Thursday in the third week of the month. With the exception of a few conflicts to work around, this has been a very successful arrangement and exposed our members to a quality of historical knowledge which they would otherwise not receive.” Tom’s CWRT is a fine case in point for making a sharing relationship with other CWRTs that are close by. Others do this as well. Chicago and Milwaukee share speakers, and I know that St. Louis and Kansas City have shared speakers including myself when I spoke there some years ago. I have been shared several times as a speaker including Houston and New Orleans, Fredericksburg and Leesburg in Virginia and two CWRTs in the Florida panhandle. It works, and it makes sense. Southern California now has several CWRTs instead of the two when I was there. The metro Chicago area has seven, at last, some large and some smaller. The metro Washington, DC area also has several CWRTs. So far as I have been able to determine, these places do not share speakers and meet on different nights of different weeks. California, in particular, would greatly benefit from sharing speakers with the several CWRTs in the Los Angeles area. Within the several CWRTs that I work with we can do all four CWRTs (in whatever combination), or even only two of the CWRTs if the speaker cannot take the time to do all four. Noted historian Stephen Davis is coming from Georgia this year, and two of the CWRTs are sharing him. The same is happening for March with a speaker from Chattanooga being shared by Clarksville and Dover. Clarksville and Evansville are sharing a speaker in August. We have had Ed Bearss for four CWRTs, Bobby Krick, David Bastain, and others from the East plus Mark Hoffman from Michigan, Mark Christ from Arkansas and Professor Mark Laus from Cincinnati as one of our annual Trans-Mississippi programs thanks to this sharing arrangement. It is time to think a little outside of the box and change this. It is not hard to do at all. This just takes some coordination and getting to know your neighbors. It also takes the willingness to move a meeting night to be able to share speakers with a neighbor CWRT. Pick a week and line up the CWRTs over consecutive nights. This way an airplane ticket can be shared two to five ways and make it much cheaper for each CWRT. The CWRT handles its own hotels and dinners but other than that the rest falls into place with a little work. This greatly benefits the smaller CWRTs in a market, as with a couple in the metro Chicago area which could then get an Ed Bearss by sharing with bigger CWRTs there. Even those in central, and more rural, Illinois would benefit. Getting bigger names helps increase and energize membership; this is a proven fact. It is great to have homegrown speakers, and we encourage that here in Tennessee, but getting a known author cannot be beaten. There is simply no downside to this at all. The Clarksville, Tennessee CWRT is now twelve years old, and we have shared speakers every year of our existence with our neighboring CWRTs and we will continue to do so for years to come. We relish working with our great neighbors. Once you try this, you will wonder why you had not done it before. It works. For a future column, I want to write about the CWRTs that meet at Civil War sites, be they battlefields, Civil War buildings or buildings that occupy Civil War sites. Please send details to me at [email protected] Greg Biggs is a historian, author and speaker on the CWRT circuit around the country and has spoken to museums, conferences and historical societies as well as Confederate and Union veterans organizations. He has founded or co-founded five CWRTs from Ohio to Tennessee to Kentucky and programs three of these. He is president of the Clarksville CWRT and an officer of the Nashville and Bowling Green CWRTs.