“There were a lot of things he didn’t want to talk about, things I guess he didn’t want to think about,” Adkins said. “In that way, I think he was like a lot of men of his generation.”

Then one day in the 1980’s, Adkins received an unexpected gift — a battlefield diary his father had written almost 40 years earlier. Filled with first-hand accounts of his father’s nine months in combat — from the hedgerows of France to the mountains of Austria — the diary opened a window on events the former Lt. Andy Adkins Jr. had never discussed with his son.

Two decades later, Adkins — associate director of technology services at UF’s law school — has turned the diary into a full-fledged memoir of his father’s experiences in Europe, combining his father’s personal accounts with his own historical research. Titled You Can’t Get Much Closer Than This, the book is scheduled for release this summer by Casemate Publishing.

The book follows the elder Adkins, a mortar platoon leader in a front-line infantry unit, through some of the fiercest battles of the European war — including the August 1944 fight to cut off retreating German forces at the Falaise Pocket, and the supply mission to an embattled French town that won him the Bronze Star.

The younger Adkins says writing the book helped him unravel a few mysteries about his father’s personality. “When I was growing up, I didn’t understand why he didn’t like to go camping,” he said. “Now I get it. Basically, he spent nine months of the war living out in the open, exposed to the elements. At one point, he went 39 days without a bath. By the end of the war, I imagine he’d had enough of the outdoors.”

The book also captures the darker moments of the war — things that the father never told his son.

“He never talked about the bad stuff, but the diary is full of the bad stuff – things like what a body looks like after it’s been dead a few days,” Adkins said.

The project also gave Adkins, a Navy veteran, a crash course in Army jargon, tactics, and equipment from the Second World War.

“I spent a lot of time researching references in the diaries to things that were unfamiliar to me,” he said.

“For instance, there’s a passage where my dad refers to driving with ‘cat lights’ — headlights that are dimmed so the driver of a vehicle won’t be spotted by the enemy. It was a bit of army jargon that I’d never heard.”

Adkins isn’t the first babyboomer to pen an homage to his father’s war record — and World War II histories of this sort have proven to be good sellers in recent years. But even if his book doesn’t hit the bestseller list, Adkins says he’s glad he was able to share his father’s diary with the world.

“This is really my father’s book,” he said. “All I did was organize the material and flesh it out. It was a labor of love.”

Now Seigel has put his mystery-writing credentials to the test with Improbable Events: Murder at Ellenton Hall, a mystery novel released in March. Seigel wrote the book, his first work of fiction, during a semester sabbatical.

“To write a novel was always a dream of mine,” Seigel said. “Sometimes you look at some of the books that do get published and you think ‘how hard can it be?’ Sometimes you come across a really great book and you wonder, ‘could I write something like that?’

“A couple of years ago I got tired of wondering,” he continued. “I decided to sit down and just do it.”

Improbable Events follows the adventures of Mark Bolton, an associate dean at the fictitious Tampa Bay University School of Law.

Bolton stumbles across a mystery when a student is found murdered in one of TBU’s classrooms. Against his better judgment, the former prosecutor can’t resist the temptation to get invloved in the investigation — even wangling an appointment as a sheriff’s deputy to improve his access to evidence.

Along the way, Bolton dodges the political pitfalls of life as a law school administrator, from squabbles about parking spaces to accusations that Bolton mishandled security before the murder.

Seigel says none of the colorful characters at TBU are portrayals of individuals at UF — not even Bolton, whose resume looks a lot like Seigel’s.

“Bolton is definitely not me, though we have a lot of things in common,” Seigel said. “They say you should write about what you know, so I write what I know. There are bits of me, and of other people I know from all aspects of my life — along with a large dose of imagination — in all these characters.”

Seigel racked up dozens of rejections before finding a home for his manuscript — a common experience for first-time novelists. He says the experience gave him newfound respect for people who make a career out of writing fiction.

“Publishing fiction is unbelievably difficult,” he said. “Just writing a book is hard enough. My hat is off to anyone who can do this not just once, but multiple times.”

Improbable Events is on sale locally at Wilbert’s and at Goering’s bookstores, where Seigel held a reading and book-signing last week. The author admits he’d like to see the book become a bestseller — but he isn’t keeping a close count of the number of copies sold.

“I’m not losing any sleep over sales,” he said. “If it becomes a bestseller, great. If nobody buys it, fine: I’ve already got a job that I love.”

Four of the Levin College of Law’s most distinguished alumni — two chief justices of the Florida Supreme Court, a president of the American Bar Association and member of the U.S. House of Representatives — have been selected for induction into the Heritage of Leadership Recognition Society.

“The society is the law school’s highest mark of distinction for preeminent graduates who assumed leadership positions on national and international levels,” said Dean Robert Jerry. “These individuals distinguished themselves in remarkable ways and it is a true privilege to honor their accomplishments.”

Justice Ehrlich and the families of the other three inductees, who are accepting posthumous awards, will be recognized at an April 8 banquet, which also will be attended by members of the college’s Law Center Association Board of Trustees and Law Alumni Council.

The Class of 2005 inductees are: Charles Bennett, a 1934 graduate, was Florida’s longest serving congressman and the second longest-tenured member of the House when he retired in 1993 after 44 years. He sponsored legislation that created the House Ethics Committee and Americans with Disabilities Act and made “In God We Trust” the U.S. motto. Bennett became the second-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee and chaired the investigative committees that oversaw the Watergate and Abscam scandals.

Raymond Ehrlich, a 1942 graduate, practiced law for 35 years before serving on the Florida Supreme Court for a decade, including as chief justice. He was appointed special counsel to U.S. Sen. Bob Graham in 1991 and received the Florida Bar Foundation’s Medal of Honor Award in 1993 for outstanding contributions to the administration of justice, including his work to automate courts, assign law clerks to circuit judges, promote alternative dispute resolution and defend judicial independence.

Richard Ervin, Jr., a 1928 graduate, was elected three times as attorney general of Florida, serving with five governors from 1949 to 1964. He is credited with desegregating Florida schools with a minimum of friction and launching a drive to rid the state of illegal gambling. As a Florida Supreme Court justice from 1964 to 1975 and chief justice in 1969 and 1970, Ervin wrote countless opinions in support of the rights of the individual, especially the poor and disadvantaged.

Chesterfield Smith, a 1948 graduate, founded one of the largest law firms in the country, Holland & Knight. As chairman for almost three decades, he led the way in hiring women and minorities and encouraging pro bono work. In 1973, he served as president of the American Bar Association and challenged President Richard Nixon during the Watergate investigations. Smith received numerous honors including the ABA Medal from the Board of Governors, American Civil Liberties Union’s Nelson Poynter Award, and the Laurie D. Zelon Pro Bono Award, presented by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Heritage of Leadership Recognition Society was officially activated in 2003 with the induction of 12 men, who collectively served as five chief justices, two governors, two Florida Bar presidents, two U.S. senators, two university presidents, two law school deans and one U.S. district court judge.

“The UF College of Law has served Florida and the nation for almost a century and has a rich legacy of educating men and women who demonstrate a lifelong dedication to education, civic, charitable and cultural causes,” Dean Jerry said. “Throughout their careers, they brought distinction to their families and our law school, and they set the standard for all of us.”