Since Indiana joined the Union in 1816, residents and visitors alike have pondered the essential question: "What is a Hoosier?" The final answer may never be determined, but there are, at least, ways to understand the Hoosier character. It was African American pilots taking a stand for equal rights. It was a speech by a presidential candidate that helped keep peace on a tragic night. It was the triumph and near tragedy involving a Mercury Seven astronaut. And it was a sacrifice that ensured a crucial American victory in the Pacific during World War II. As Kurt Vonnegut once said, "I don't know what it is about Hoosiers, but wherever you go there is always a Hoosier doing something very important there." Award-winning biographer Ray E. Boomhower tells us why.
Native Hoosier Ray E. Boomhower has worked at the Indiana Historical Society since 1987, serving as editor of the society's popular history magazine, Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, since 1999. He is the author of numerous articles and books on the nineteenth state, including biographies of such notable Hoosiers as Gus Grissom, Ernie Pyle, Lew Wallace and May Wright Sewall. In 1998, he received the Hoosier Historian Award from the IHS, and in 2010, he was named winner of the Regional Author Award in the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards.