My name is Robert Lee Packett or as some of you may know me, Prof. Bob. I have always been fascinated by history for as long as I can remember. I was born in the thick of history in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up six blocks from Fort McHenry of The Star Spangled Banner fame. Looking at my name you can guess my family has deep Virginia roots. I found out years later while researching my father’s many stories that I have had direct relatives in almost every war fought by Colonial Virginia and the United States.

Although surrounded by American history, it was really Ancient Greece, Rome and the Middle Ages that fascinated me. There was just something about Chariot Racing( I saw Ben-Hur when I was 6) and Caesar along with all the Arthurian legends that captivated me. At age seven I typed the entire list of all the Roman Emperors from the World Book Encyclopedia just to have a set of notes. Today those yellowed pages are still in my main Roman Empire notebook.

I attended Southwest Missouri University (now Missouri State University) which in the 60’s and 70’s had one of the best history programs in the midwest United states. I was educated by a whole array of brilliant scholars who were master teachers. Dr. Sarah Farley, the Medieval expert, Prof. Huff , the military collector and American historian, and Dr. David Adams my Latin American History teacher. Dr. Adams twisted my arm into taking his Early Latin America class, and which turned out to be the class responsible for my first job.

My Master’s Degree is from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. My degree is in Ancient History with an American minor which rounded out my comprehensive undergraduate Middle Ages, American Military and political history emphasis. I was also deep into studying and collecting French Revolution and Napoleonic Era materials.

My first job was teaching Latin American history at Park Hill High School. I taught in the Park Hill School District high schools for 30 years rising to Department Chair before I retired. There I taught World History, Latin American History, AP European history, World War I, Cold War, and the American Revolution.

I retired a few years ago from teaching High School and began teaching at Maple Woods Community College where I had been teaching night classes since 1990. Now I teach American History and Western Civilization.

I’ve been known online as Prof. Bob from my podcast History According to Bob. I have been doing a six day a week history podcast for over four years now. Some of the topics I have covered are pirates, mistresses, Rome, Maya, and American Civil war, to name only a few of over 1300 topics. I have spent my life building a 7,000 volume library, and collecting artifacts that I use in my classes to bring history alive. I love to tell stories about real people behind the often sterile descriptions found in history books or distorted by time. My style is conversational, filled with anecdotes, quips, humor and explanation. It is an attempt to bring life to the sometimes dusty characters of history. I hope you will enjoy my podcast contributions here at historytimes.com.