Joe Owen is a National Park Ranger at Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park in Johnson City, Texas. Having served 15 years in the U.S, Navy, he attended college at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma receiving a Bachelor' s Degree in History and a Master's Degree in Secondary Education. He taught Social Studies for eight years in Oklahoma, Texas and Oregon before working for the National Park Service. He is a co-author of two books about Hood's Texas Brigade, Texans At Gettysburg: Blood and Glory with Hood's Texas Brigade, (2016), Texans at Antietam: A Terrible Clash of Arms, September 16-17, 1862, (2017), and is the author of Lone Star Valor: Texans of the Blue and Gray at Gettysburg (2019.) He received the Jefferson Davis Gold Medal from the United Daughters of the Confederacy for outstanding research and writing in 2019.
Stephen M. “Sam” Hood is a graduate of Kentucky Military Institute, Marshall University (BBA, 1976), and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. A collateral descendent of General Hood, Sam is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Blue Gray Education Society, a past president of the Board of Directors of Confederate Memorial Hall Museum in New Orleans, and the author of The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood (2015).