Dan Kellum Email & Phone Number

Longview, Tx, Us

Longview, Texas Area

I'm a writer/publisher of Books I and II, American Heroes: Grunts, Pilots & "Docs" about the Vietnam War. I served in Vietnam as a Marine infantry officer in 1970 in the Da Nang area. Spent 21 years putting together the two books on the Vietnam War citing 1,019 Marines, 42 Navy Corpsmen and other U.S. Military personnel for a total of 1,109 men. Scope of books and where to purchase them are on my website at www.michaeldankellum.com.

Atlanta, Texas

As Associate Publisher of the Citzens Journal in Atlanta, TX, I was responsible for what appeared in our twice a week newspaper and made sure as the 'gatekeeper' nothing of a libelous nature made it to print. I would also stand in for the publisher when he was out of town or not available. We went head-to-head with another bi-weekly newspaper in the small town and the competition for advertisers and news stories was pretty intense. A good portion of my job was reporting, photography, making sure all the news pages were filled with news or photos and lay-out of the newspaper galleys for publication at our printing facility across the nearby stateline in Vivian, Louisiana. You could say our overall reporting was aggressive and our newspaper was on top of the hot button issues in our county in East Texas. I totally enjoyed my job in Atlanta and seeing the large crowd waiting outside our newspaper office each issue to grab a newspaper fresh off the presses to see where our stories would take them that week. Writing and publishing in those days was a calling of sorts and a challenge each issue to put out a quality product. My Atlanta newspaper stint helped shape me into the self-assured writer I am today. I'm thankful to Bill Turner, the publisher, for giving me that opportunity to learn the trade in such a creative, competitive atmosphere.

Rusk, Texas

The (Rusk) Cherokeean was a weekly newspaper that competed with a nearby daily newspaper so we had to dig a little deeper and find more creative angles to stories to compete with the daily. As the Managing Editor, I was a reporter, photographer, darkroom worker, helped lay out the galleys onto the news pages, burned the newspaper plates, ran the plates over to Henderson to their printing facility and returned to fill the newspaper racks in Rusk. I did it all. Nearby Rusk State Hospital was a gold mine of stories and a major source of employment for our citizens. My bosses were Texas Rep. Emmett Whitehead and his wife, Marie, who initially gave me a start as a staff writer during summer breaks from SFASU to whet my appetite for newspaper writing. I learned every aspect of writing a good story from my beginnings at Rusk. I am working on a fiction book that is loosely based on my time at these small East Texas publications. The experience was an excellent fertile field of material for a book.

Bachelor Of Arts (Ba), Communications/Journalism, Completed All But 6 Hours And Thesis For Ma Degree

Activities and Societies: 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines Vietnam Veterans Association; Marine Corps League Detachment 959 in Longview, TX.

Education record

None, Just Attended Two Semesters Before Deciding To Join The Marines., Business Administration And Management, General

Education record