Author’s Bio

Richard Galt Zimermann, Jr.

I first learned Virginia history at my paternal grandmother’s knee, with marvelous tales mixing her Virginia genealogy and historical accounts. As I later read history on my own I read with a developing passion, in part to be able to talk with my grandmother.

But I wanted to call a place to call home, and since I had been moved around every two to three years in early life and really had no place to call home, I chose Virginia. By the time I went to college, most of my life had been spent in Virginia among three locations, my driver’s license said Virginia, so I called myself a Virginian.

Personal. I am a sixty-eight year old Virginian married for twenty-five years. Our home embraces two daughters, a niece, two cats and two dogs. I enjoy a hobby of residential landscaping inspired by Andrea Wulf’s Founding Gardeners and the “dead and dying” planting discount tables at my local home improvement stores.

Early life. I was raised a Navy junior, son and grandson of destroyer Naval officers. My father was an “east coast sailor” for the most part, so I was partly raised in Key West FL, Charleston SC, Newport RI, Norfolk VA and Alexandria VA. Middle School and the beginning of high school was spent in Yokosuka, Japan, and I graduated from a private high school in Alexandria.

Young adult. I graduated from the College of William and Mary with a history degree, concentrating in U.S. history, but I made a point of spreading my electives across courses in government, law, philosophy, sociology and psychology. During the Vietnam War, I served as an aviation supply officer with both helicopter and jet squadrons. Stationed in North Carolina,

I began acting on my interest in teaching by tutoring sixth graders who had difficulty in reading comprehension. That is the reading level in school curricula where literacy limits compromises a child’s ability to absorb the assigned material. Paying attention to the teacher talking alone is no longer sufficient to grasp the course of instruction.

Advanced degrees and graduate study. To begin a career in teaching, I took a Masters of Education at William and Mary in curriculum writing U.S. History. Half of the graduate level courses were taken in the History Department. Subsequently to recertify my Virginia teaching license in U.S. History, I studied graduate courses and seminars across every U.S. historical period at Old Dominion University, James Madison University and George Mason University. To maintain my special education certification, I took thirty hours in graduate study at the University of Virginia.

Teaching career. My career as a high school teacher ranged from general education to special education, at public high schools, a treatment center and a technical school in a G.E.D. program. The last fifteen years were spent in Fairfax County Public Schools where I wrote curriculum for the U.S. and Virginia History courses in the twenty-nine secondary schools during the summers, and during the school years, co-taught special ed students in mainstreamed regular education classes along with self-contained special education classes.

Retirement. Following early retirement due to a medical condition, I have devoted myself to the study of Virginia history, beginning a new life chapter as a writer. I have now a personal library over two hundred volumes in Virginia history, along with another one hundred volumes in U.S. history.

A continuing civic interest of mine in in the area of Adult Literacy. Please click on the link to read further on the subject.

See also 

• Author’s First Principles and world view
• Author’s Writing Projects on Virginia history