Connie Marie (Aldridge) Huddleston loved history and dreamed of writing a book even as a child. In 2015, she will publish her fifth and sixth volumes, all dealing with her first love, our nation's past. Born in Owensboro, Kentucky, on 12 August 1952 to Thomas Kenneth and Lena Carl "Carol" Aldridge, she grew up entirely in Kentucky where generations of her family have lived from the beginning of the Commonwealth. Connie attended school at McCracken County's Concord and Forestdale Elementary Schools and Heath High School before moving to Lexington, Kentucky, for her junior year at Lafayette High School. She graduated from Anderson County High School in 1970 and then attended the University of Kentucky, graduating in 3.5 years with a degree in Special Education. Connie married 2nd Lt. Charles Vernon Huddleston (U.S. Army) of Madisonville, Kentucky, on 4 February 1973. As a military family, they resided at various times in Germany, Texas, Georgia, California, and Maryland over the next 20 years. Two children joined the family during their first tour in Germany, Amy Cassandra and Charles Adrian.
Connie taught middle school in Hinesville, Georgia, and at a Department of Defense School in Pirmasens, Germany, before continuing her education at Frostburg State University (Maryland) and receiving a second bachelor degree. This one is in history with an emphasis on archaeology. Over the next 30 years, she continued to be employed as an archaeologist in Maryland and then Georgia. In 2003, she received her masters' degree in historic preservation from Goucher College, Maryland. In 2005, Connie started her own historic preservation consulting firm, Interpreting Time's Past, LLC, to provide more time for creative writing.
Connie's first book, Marshall County (Kentucky) for Arcadia Press, is a pictorial history of her mother's home county. Her second and third books, again pictorial histories, deal with Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps in Georgia and Kentucky. In 2014, Connie published her first fiction volume, written for middle grade readers. Greg's First Adventure in Time deals with a 12 year-old-boys adventure as he accidently time travels 3,000 years into North America's Archaic Period. In 2015, this volume received the Children's Literary Classics Seal of Approval. Greg's Second Adventure in Time will be released on 1 October 2015.
For the past few years, Connie has researched Georgia's Bulloch family and is currently working on a biography of James Stephens Bulloch, President Theodore Roosevelt's maternal grandfather. On 14 October 2015, Mittie & Thee: An 1853 Roosevelt Romance will be released by her and her coauthor Gwendolyn Koehler. It is the story of the courtship of Theodore Roosevelt's parents and is not only a collection of never before published, transcribed letters, but a commentary of two antebellum societies.
Connie resides in a log cabin near Crab Orchard, Kentucky, with her husband and their Australian Shepherd Katie. They all enjoy the quiet of rural Kentucky.
