Thomas Forehand, Jr. grew up in Burns, Tennessee, and lived in both Burns and
Nashville while attending junior high school and high school at Montgomery Bell
Academy (the institution on which the 1989 film Dead Poets Society is
based), where he was voted “wittiest” in his senior class. In 1968, he graduated
from the University of Tennessee with a degree in radio and television
journalism. While at UT, he was a member of the Scabbard and Blade National
Military Honor Society and a member of Sigma Delta Chi, the national collegiate
journalism society. A feature article he wrote about a wounded officer in the
Vietnam War was selected by the journalism faculty there as one of two to
represent the university in the William Randolph Hearst National Feature Writing
Competition.
Upon graduation, he moved to New York City to work for the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare. After teaching high school math to low-income
students in Philadelphia, he returned to Tennessee to attend Memphis State
University Law School. During his second semester, he became a Christian, left
law school, and soon moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, where he taught
junior-high math for four years. He married and became interested in studying
and researching the Bible and its doctrines.
In 1976, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, to attend Southwestern Baptist
Theological Seminary, where he graduated with a master of divinity degree in
December 1979. He was a pastor at two Baptist churches in Alabama before
returning to Tennessee with his wife and three children to put down permanent
roots in Clarksville.
After reading Stanley F. Horn's The Robert E. Lee Reader in the
1990s, Mr. Forehand's reading, research, and writing became solely focused on
the famous general. Since the summer of 2001, he has been
portraying Robert E. Lee
at Sons of Confederate Veterans camps, historical societies, United Daughters of
the Confederacy chapters, and other historically interested groups. In 2004, he
was granted the Robert E. Lee Award from the Tennessee Division of the Sons of
Confederate Veterans for his portrayals.
You can read more about Mr. Forehand's passion
for Robert E. Lee by visiting his website:
www.generalrobertelee.org.
After spending most of his life in the field of public and religious
education, Mr. Forehand is now a civil servant. When not researching or
portraying the “Marble Man,” he enjoys exercising and spending time with his
family. |