BLACKSBURG, April 26, 2000-- Greystone Communications, an award-winning production company based in North Hollywood, will produce two videos on West Virginia as a Child of the Civil War for Virginia Tech's Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, center director James I. Robertson Jr. announced today. A grant from the Hugh I. Shott Jr. Foundation will underwrite production of the videos.

Greystone is noted for the numerous historical and biographical series it has produced for television, among them Civil War Journal, Ancient Mysteries, The Real West, Biography, Brute Force, and for TNN The Life and Times of.

"We are both fortunate and honored to be working with Greystone. Its track-record for quality and accuracy in historical documentaries is unequaled," said Robertson, who is also an Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at Virginia Tech and a nationally noted Civil War historian.

The first of the two videos will look at the effect of Virginia's secession on its western counties, while the second one will examine Virginia's efforts to hold onto its western counties, which resulted in a number of military actions, and West Virginia's development into a separate state.

The videos will be distributed to all elementary and high schools in West Virginia as well as selected schools in western Virginia.

Robertson said that he is already at work on script layout for the videos. On-site filming is scheduled to begin in July. An award-winning author, he has already written and narrated several videos about Virginia in the Civil War for public television.