author

with a double major in journalism and Spanish, having studied a semester in Valladolid, Spain. In college, her life-long passion for writing and history blossomed into a love for telling stories of the "everyday" people who made history.

She put that passion to paper as a reporter for newspapers in Illinois and Wisconsin, winning nine press association awards along the way. From 1997-2001, she was an editor for the Credit Union Executives Society, Madison, Wis., and now works full time on her books.

Gilpatrick is also the author of other books in the Hero Next Door Collection, including Footprints in Courage: A Bataan Death March Survivor's Story and is editor and publisher of the newest book in the series, WAR Through the Hole of a Donut. She is completing the next in the Hero Next Door® series, which will profile Korean War veterans.

Gilpatrick is co-owner and founder of Hunter Halverson Press, LLC, and co-founder of the Heritage Guard Preservation Society, a nonprofit partnership whose aim is to protect and preserve historical military places, artifacts and memoirs.

Gilpatrick also founded Operation Freedom Appreciation in 2000, a program where she asks each American to thank at least one armed forces veteran a year.