Two descendants of U.S. presidents will join author and historian Tim Pletkovich via Zoom for a program that will focus on the unique ancestral heritages of several of our nation’s former commanders in chief.

The event will take place at the Kewanee Public Library at 1 p.m. on Monday, April 7. Pletkovich and his special guests will discuss the intrinsic cultural aspects of the various regions of Britain from which these presidents’ ancestors came.

Appearing remotely with Pletkovich will be author and former war correspondent Philip Smucker, a great-great-great-great-great-great-nephew of George Washington. Smucker, who spent 25 years covering global conflicts in such countries as Haiti, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Cambodia, has written for Time magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, the Daily Telegraph, U.S. News and World Report, Asia Times, USA Today and the International Herald Tribune. During his journalism career, he received three Pulitzer nominations.

Smucker has appeared on such television news programs as the Today Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, CNN and the PBS NewsHour. His first two books were entitled My Brother, My Enemy: America and the Battle of Ideas Across the Islamic World and AL-Qaeda’s Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror’s Tail.

Smucker’s most recent work, Riding with George: Sportsmanship and Chivalry in the Making of America’s First President, has become one of the nation’s most acclaimed books covering the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Early Republic Periods. In addition to his collateral lineage with Washington, he is also a direct descendant of Virginia statesman and Constitutional Convention delegate George Mason.

Also participating electronically will be author and former decorative arts curator at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, Ulysses Grant Dietz. A great-great-grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, Dietz has written several books pertaining to such subjects as Victorian furniture, art pottery, studio ceramics, jewelry, and the White House.

He has also penned the best-selling novels Desmond and its sequel, Vampire in Suburbia. Dietz’s most recent novel is Cliffhanger. Every year on April 27, he is a feature speaker at Grant’s Tomb in New York City where he commemorates his great-great-grandfather’s life and legacy.

Dietz is also a great-grandson of Nobel Peace Prize winner and statesman Elihu Root, who during his political career, served as a United States senator, secretary of state, and secretary of war.

Petkovich, a former resident of Kewanee, has appeared at various venues with Smucker and Dietz. Pletkovich has authored Civil War Fathers: Sons of the Civil War in World War II. He also co-authored Nuns, Nazis, and Notre Dame: Stories of the Great Depression, World War II and the Fighting Irish.

Pletkovich is a former contributor for the Blue and Gray magazine. He received the Ella A. Dickey Award at the 2017 Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival. Past recipients of the Dicky Award have included former First Lady Laura Bush, former United States senator and Democratic Party presidential nominee, the late George McGovern, and former Texas First Lady, the late Nellie Connally. Pletkovich was formerly employed as a baseball scout for the Chicago Cubs, and he later covered the Boston Red Sox as a field reporter for WATD Radio in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

This program is being sponsored by the Kewanee Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. It is open to the public and will be held in the community room at the library.