‘MTSU On the Record’ guest uses Gore Center to piece together late mother’s fascinating life(미들테네시주립대학교)Middle Tennessee State University[미국항공대학교,미국항공유학]

‘MTSU On the Record’ guest uses Gore Center to piece together late mother’s fascinating life

(미들테네시주립대학교)Middle Tennessee State University

A university professor who used the Albert Gore Research Center at MTSU to get to know his late mother will be the guest on the next “MTSU On the Record” radio program.

Host Gina Logue’s interview with Dr. Joseph Harrington, an English professor at the University of Kansas, will air from 6 to 6:30 a.m. Sunday, July 16, on WMOT-FM Roots Radio 89.5 and wmot.org.

In the early 2000s, Harrington came to Tennessee to dig into the Gore Center’s archives for information on Elizabeth “Lib” Peoples Harrington, a Dyersburg, Tennessee, native who served as Sen. Albert Gore Sr.’s personal secretary for about seven years. She left the office when she married but returned briefly to work for Gore in 1965-66 when he opened a Memphis office to serve constituents.

Joseph Harrington was only 12 years old when his mother died of breast cancer in 1974. He transformed his research and his childhood memories into a combination biography and elegy, “Things Come On.”WMOT Roots Radio-new logo-2017 web 

The professor said he used everything from his mother’s medical charts to her official correspondence as a politician’s aide as inspiration. The tone of “Things Come On” mirrors how young Joseph perceived life during his mother’s illness through the lens of the Watergate scandal, which paralleled the illness’s duration.

“Those two events are just bound up together for me — this strange and kind of confusing and threatening public … catastrophe and the private disaster that was going on at the same time,” said Harrington.

Elizabeth Peoples Harrington died on Aug. 8, 1974, the same day Richard Nixon resigned as U.S. president.

To hear previous “MTSU On the Record” programs, visit the searchable “Audio Clips” archives at mtsunews.com.