• Love, honor and Iowa in the Civil War

  Original play by Jane Cox part of ISU Theatre's spring season.

• As a young child, Jane Cox would hear about her family's participation in the Civil War. Her great, great, great-grandfather served on the Union side and eventually died of disease before the war was won.
  
  Stories of that Iowan's desire to preserve the Union was handed down from generation to generation of Cox's family. It wasn't just the stories that were passed on. Cox has a hatpin made from a button from her great, great, great-grandfather's uniform and still owns the Bible he carried.
  
  "I grew up hearing stories of him and his service," the ISU Theatre professor said. "It probably was because of that that I became interested in the Civil War."
  
  Cox has taken that interest and spilled it over into another interest of hers - creating original plays about historical figures or events. Her past works include one-woman shows on the life of Carrie Chapman Catt and Noble Prize-winning scientist Barbara McClintock.
  
  She has also written about life on the Nebraskan prairie and penned an original play on the lives of 12 servicemen and women from World War II.
  
  Her latest offering, "Love and Honor," will premiere on the Fisher Theater stage in late February and early March (see story on page 8). "Love and Honor" follows four young men from Iowa who volunteer for a period of three years to protect and preserve the Union during the Civil War.
  
  Two are brothers, one is a young married father, and one, a young farmer, who is engaged to be married. The four struggle with boredom and loneliness as well as the terrors of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Andersonville and Sherman's March to the Sea.
  
  And in a homage to her great, great, great-grandfather, Cox has made one of the characters a furniture maker from Des Moines - just like her ancestor was.
  
  While "Love and Honor" has similarities to her earlier World War II play, "Heroes Among Us," this production is a little different.
  
  "The characters in ‘Heroes' were all real and they all made it through the war," Cox said. "‘Love and Honor' isn't based on any one specific individual but rather based upon where Iowans that served in the Civil War went and what they saw."
  
  Cox based her script on letters, diaries and narratives of the time period of men who made the vow to serve and defend their families and their young country.
  
  In those letters and diaries Cox found not only the horrors of war, but hope for the United States.
  
  "They were fighting for an ideal - that the Union had to be brought back together," she said. "I find that inspiring."
  
  After years of thinking of writing "Love and Honor," Cox decided that this was the right time - especially with Iowa State celebrating its Sesquicentennial.
  
  "The 150th celebration is the reason I decided to write it now," she said. "I thought it provided a wonderful opportunity when people on campus are thinking about the history, not only of Iowa State, but the state of Iowa as well."

Jane Cox and the cast of "Love and Honor"

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February 25 to March 9, 2008