Sunday Scholar Series
February 4, 2007
3 - 4 pm (time approximate after performance)

You do not need to attend the performance that day to participate in this discussion. Just arrive at the theatre a few minutes before 3 pm and enter the theatre after the performance ends.

We are aware that this event falls on Super Bowl Sunday. The panel discussion will be completed by 4 pm, well in advance of the Bears' 5 pm kick-off.

• A one-hour, post-show panel discussion with experts on the themes and issues of the play
• The panel discussion is a free event

The Sunday Scholars panel on February 4 will be moderated by TimeLine Board Member Peter H. Kuntz (Managing Director, Programs and Production - Chicago Humanities Festival) and will feature panelists:

Diana Sebek
Sebek joined the Army Student Nurse program in 1967. After basic training at Ft. Sam Houston in Texas, she served at the Ireland Army Hospital for nine months before serving a tour of duty at the 18th Surgical Hospital near Quang Tri, Viet Nam.  After resigning her commission on December 25, 1970, she worked as a nurse until 2002 when PTSD (post trauma stress disorder) forced her to seek help through the Veteran's Administration.  She retired from working in understaffed Chicago area hospitals with VA assistance in 2003.  She is an author of short stories and presently working on a third novel.  She works in ceramic art and has done several years of performance art to enhance her self awareness and creative healing techniques that she still practices.  Diana continues to live in Chicago.

Bert Powell
Powell was a combat infantryman during World War II.  He enlisted when he was 19 years old and served from 1942 to 1946. He was the first gunner in a caliber 30 light machine gun squad and fought through France, Germany and Austria. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal in 1945.  Several years ago, he wrote his World War II memoir and found that the process proved to be an intense and profound experience.

Before writing the memoir, he had never talked much to anyone, nor his wife and two children, about his experiences in the war. But as he grew older and into his 70s, he felt a need for his wife, Enid, and his son and daughter, to know about his life before they knew him.  One of the major inspirations that kept him going, was a quote he came across:

"Every generation starts fresh, which may try a lot of nerves, but in the long run makes it possible to go on.  This is why most children grow up knowing next to nothing about who their parents are, or of the forces that shaped their lives.  Curiosity, if it comes, arrives only when the kids have lived long enough to know the right questions to ask.  But by then it's often too late."