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2
Jan 16

Seeing Savannah’s sights

The people of Savannah used to call themselves “The Hostess City of the South,” which is one of those surely government-based promotional nicknames that is not in anyway worthy of a lovely town. Savannah is a lovely town. The Yankee and I took our first trip here. We got married here. We sometimes come back, as we have this week.

You do it for scenes like this:

The former was in the historic district. The latter was at Bonaventure Cemetery, where we spent some time today, taking in the sun and breeze and quiet while walking among the history and solemn scenery.

Amidst it all, there are a few dozen military graves in their own formal section.

Edward Myers had service in three wars, and earned a bronze star:

John Carter and the 401st were in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. He died in Belgium:

Charles Higgs Jr. was a marine platoon sergeant. He was killed on the first day of the invasion of Iwo Jima:

Gentry Hoitt was in a different division of marines, but I bet Higgs knew the gunnery sergeant from back home. Hoitt was killed on the second day at Iwo Jima. He had six brothers and sisters, but they are all gone now. The last of them died in 2014. The 5th Division, meanwhile, scratched, cussed and fought on Iwo for more than a month with 2,482 killed in action, 19 missing in action, and 6,218 wounded in action, the highest casualty rate among the three Marine divisions involved in the invasion.

The 6th Marine Division fought in the Solomons, Guam, Guadalcanal and Okinawa. I can’t find anything about him online or what he did in the few years of his short life that he was left with after the war. If he was there for all of those events, though, he probably saw more than he should have had to:

John Chudob served in two wars, and there’s a brief mention of him in a Kansas newspaper, in between. There are a few Chudobas still in Georgia. I wonder if this is one of their ancestors:

It isn’t readily apparent what the 18th did in the Big Red One during World War I, but if William Breen was there throughout he might have seen one or some of these battles, Montdidier-Noyon, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne, Lorraine or Picardy. There are reasons the First Division became so famous during and after that war. They were the first to go to Europe, the last to come home and they paraded in New York City in 1919. Who knows, he could be one of the men in the photos on this site covering their return and parade. I wonder if he ever talked about it when he came back home:

One of the steps on this memorial arch is engraved “Heirs together of the grace of life,” which becomes an even more beautiful sentiment the more you think about it.

There are beautiful oaks at Bonaventure:

And back downtown, at night:

But that was before dinner at the Crab Shack:

Alabama / cycling / Friday / history / photo — Comments Off
16
Oct 15

Remembering the Comers

At lunch today I was reading a forum about race recovery. (And, I promise, I’ll stop talking about this just as soon as the novelty of something I did last Saturday still leaves me feeling wiped out wears off.) The general consensus was that we don’t always know why recovery can take this long or that long. There are things you can do to help speed the process along.

Of course I’m doing very few of those things, it turns out. Maybe next time.

The other consensus was that the duration of your recovery has to do with your overall general fitness. When you think about it, that seems both logically true and annoyingly insulting. I just swam a mile and rode 56 and ran 13. Let’s say I’m in pretty decent shape. Except it is going to take me more days than the average bear to recover.

I did ride for a bit this evening, just plodding along at a slow speed. I think I managed to get into the 20s about four times. So it was a nice, easy 20-mile ride through town. I went up one of the parking decks, just for the view:

That’s Comer Hall, where I spent a lot of my time in undergrad. It is named after Braxton Bragg Comer, the 33rd governor of Alabama, and, later, an appointed senator. Serving in the first quarter of the 20th century he would be considered a progressive. He lowered railroad rates, came out for child labor laws, was a prohibitionist and, also was a big proponent of education, health improvements and conservation. Of course he also served in a time of poll taxes and other segregationist strategies. He went into the governor’s office just six years after blacks were disenfranchised and the Republican party was effectively tamped out in Alabama, something which would take roughly 80 years for the GOP to overcome. Like so many other people and things in the south, the industrialist Comer’s is a tricky legacy.

At home, he and his wife had nine children. They’re all buried in Elmwood, near their parents. One of the sons, Donald, also became an industrialist in his father’s footsteps and would run Avondale Mills while Braxton was in public service. To be of a certain age and from a certain swath of the south and to hear Avondale Mills is to understand the impact of the Comer family on the region. But, then, history is funny like that. When textiles moved away and the economy shifted and commercial impact took on another face, who would know of the legacy of the Comers or their mills or mines? Ans when you think of that you have to wonder, what have we unknowingly forgotten?

Allie, by the way, is very interested in reading some of Comer’s speeches:

history / I do not know what is happening. / photo / podcast / running / swimming / Thursday — Comments Off
17
Sep 15

Jogging achievement unlocked

I ran 10 miles today, he said nonchalantly.

And, in both of those phrases, I do not know what is happening.

I also swam 3,000 yards. So I’m tired, sure. But it feels great, too. That’s all unexpected, but then I took a rest day, no exercise, earlier this week and at one point I didn’t think one day would do the trick, but by the end of the evening I was ready to get back to it. I wonder how long I can keep all this up. Not long enough.

I found this on campus during my run today:

Miller Wire Works …

was founded on April 1, 1949 by Charles E. Miller and is now into its third generation of family ownership. Originally employing three men, it now operates with 55 highly skilled workers. Present facilities include offices, two manufacturing plants and a machine shop consisting of 78,000 square feet.

They’re still in wire, and they’ve been working in polyurethane since the 1980s. I believe that campus building was built in the late 1960s, but I couldn’t say when the door went in.

Miller is far too common a name to ask Google to scare up anything definitive.

Here’s something to know for sure: I want to be this guy when I grow up. Peaking at ninety:

Richard Dreselly first hiked to the top of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire in 1941. He has since hiked the 6288 foot summit seventeen times. Now at 90, he climbed for what he says will be his last time. Globe photographer John Tlumacki captured his three day arduous journey amid the stunning mountain views.

Here’s the full story that goes with that photo gallery.

And a podcast with my old friend Chadd. He’s talking about what it takes to be an athletic director in college sports.

history / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
20
Jul 15

Walking amidst rocks

I had occasion to visit a country cemetery about the same time the really silly parts of the Confederate flag conversation was going on. It is the kind of place where, standing in the center, you can see the cemetery was carved out of otherwise unused land. You don’t hear anything except the breeze and, occasionally, some far distance heavy machinery. You can’t even see the country road off which you turned onto the gravel path to get there. It is a pretty and peaceful place and in a part of the world where you still refer to people by a plural version of their family name.

The cemetery sits most of the way up a rolling part of a tiny, tiny foothill in the southern Appalachians, in a part of the region that, during the Civil War, was as confusing and complicated as any other. Most of the people that lived in this part of the world then weren’t even secessionists. Historically, you would find, that many of them saw the entire conflict as a war of the men that lived in other parts of the South. In this part of the world, then, things could get particularly personal and bitter. Supporters of both sides had violent conscription efforts terrifying families.

In fact, on one side of my family the young men tried to stay out of the war, but were eventually enlisted to the Union’s cause when their soldiers came through. On the other side of my family there are at least some documented Confederates and these people all lived within 30 or so miles of one another. This sort of thing was not uncommon in that area.

Anyway, the cemetery would have been a great opportunity to write another navel-gazing essay about the way of things. Near one entrance to the cemetery was the marker of this man, who I am not related to:

Someone placed a Confederate flag there.

To the left was an entire line of James Fleming’s family buried right alongside. A few generations and not many more plots away you read that some of his descendants served in later wars. And beside their markers someone had placed American flags.

Livingstone’s 8th Cavalry, by the way, was organized late in the war, reporting to duty in the summer of 1864 and fought in Alabama and Florida before surrendering at Gainesville the next year.

The TL:DR aspect of the essay would be that, for some people, this is complicated. That got lost in the heated rhetoric in the long-overdue move to take those flags from government land, which is probably fine. And it seems dismissed entirely in the even deeper rhetoric of that imagery in general, and that seems simultaneously good and a shame. For some people it is complicated.

Nearby here is another old cavalry man:

The 4th Alabama cavalry was formed in 1863 and fought in east Tennessee, Mississippi and all over north and central Alabama. They were essentially a hyperactive home guard before many of them were captured at Selma in the spring of 1865.

And I just put this one here because I like the name:

Ollice was a farmer before World War II. He had some grammar school under his belt. He was enlisted at Fort McClellan, in Anniston, a week before Pearl Harbor. That’s all I can find about him online.

Next time I’m in that area I’ll have to ask around. There are still plenty of McNatts in that area.

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16
Jul 15

The tank banks

I saw this piggy bank at Stonehenge. At the time I had no idea about the history behind it, which is, like most history, rather interesting.

It comes from a World War 1 British fund raising campaign. Six tanks toured the countryside promoting war bonds. You have to remember this is in the fall of 1917 and tanks were still the high end of war marvels. The public was fascinated to see in person what they were just starting to read about.

The tank rolled in with soldiers and artillery alongside. Airplanes dropped pamphlets, speeches were made. The tank was put through its paces before spending several days in the town with a table inside where people were giving money. They raised millions of pounds, nationally. Soon a competition emerged to see which place could raise the most money and “win” a tank. West Hartlepool would win and Egbert — they do know how to name things, don’t they? — stayed in the town until it was scrapped in 1937.

After the war was over, the government gave 264 tanks to towns and cities in 1919. Most just rusted out over time and sold for scrap. All but one was gone before the end of World War II. The town of Ashford still has their tank, the only one left. It is now a registered war memorial, though without its engine or gearbox and with replica armaments. You can see the tank here:

That tank, one of 1,200 Mark IVs the British built for that particular war, is thought to have never seen combat. Only eight remain. The Mark IV carried a crew of eight and traveled at seven miles per hour.