On the morning of Friday, April 5, 1968, West Tennessean Norman Lane, a recent casualty of the Vietnam War, lay in repose in a government-issued casket at the Brownsville, Tennessee Funeral Home. On the same morning, at the R.S. Lewis Funeral Home in Memphis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lay in repose in a temporary bronze casket. The world knows the story of Dr. King’s life and his legacy. Now, thanks to the research and work of Al Claiborne, the world will discover the sacrifice of Lane. 

In this episode, Claiborne, Brownsville native and Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, shares details from his new book, “A Time Past, Or What Might Have Been . . . The Odyssey of Norman Lane.” Included in the conversation is how Claiborne used letters, interviews with his friends and colleagues and a thorough dive into all kinds of archival materials to tell one soldier’s inspiring story. 

You can purchase the book at https://a.co/d/eUAsawu or find out more about Norman Lane at normanlanejrmemorialproject.org/ 

This episode is sponsored by the Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge.