Fred and I were second cousins, he helped me get my feet wet in genealogy. He actually wasn't interested in the Civil War when we met, I got him interested when I started asking about our common ancestors. After a trip to the National Archives where he got the military records of all of his ancestors, he got the bug. His wife died of cancer about the time he retired from the NSA, and he spent the rest of his life researching family and Tippah County Confederates.