[MSN] Destroying history in state's national parks

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Destroying history in state's national parks

By JACK WILKINSON 
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/11/06
FORT OGLETHORPE - For a sense of the 21st-century casualties of the Civil
War, simply follow Jim Szyjkowski to the far corner of the maintenance
compound at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.

"We call this 'The Boneyard,' " Szyjkowski, a park ranger, said, gesturing
toward the destruction on the ground: a headless Union soldier statue, with
his left hand gone too. Three oversized stone cannonballs lying idly beside
parts of two damaged monuments commemorating Civil War troops from Maryland.

Then there's the lonely base of a missing statue from one of the
ever-popular Michigan monuments. "For whatever reason, Michigan seems to be
our most vandalized [state] monuments," said Szyjkowski. "I don't know if
somebody had a vendetta against them or what, but they took a beating."

"Michigan's number one, huh?" Al Chestnut, a tourist from Port Huron, Mich.,
said later while visiting the park with his family. He smiled. "Apparently,
there's still a grudge going on."

It may be coincidental that here, as at many Civil War battlefield sites in
the U.S. National Parks System, Union monuments and statues are vandalized
far more often than their Confederate counterparts. Vandalism - in many
forms - remains a perplexing, if periodic, problem at the 27 Civil War sites
in the parks system.

"How could anybody feel it's an appropriate thing to do?" asked Sam Weddle,
the chief ranger at Chickamauga. "It's an atrocity."

"That's like a violation of the country, of history. That just raises my
hair. Look," said Javier Torres, holding out his right forearm.

Torres, a 40-year-old California businessman, was photographing an open
field where, in September 1863, hundreds of the 4,329 soldiers killed in the
two-day battle of Chickamauga died.

"I'm Mexican, but I've been in this country since I was 2 years old," said
Torres, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran. "The men who died here, they fought
for everybody. It's so beautiful here, and for people to vandalize this
place, it's like spitting on it."

It's not just this place, however. In February, in Gettysburg National
Military Park - the site of the pivotal battle in the Civil War - vandals
seriously damaged three monuments. Using a truck and chains, they pulled the
sculpture off the 11th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Monument on the
Pennsylvania battlefield.

Also toppled were two bronze sculptures: one of an infantryman from the
114th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Monument, another an artilleryman from
the 4th New York Battery monument.

"That was just horrible-and-a-half to everybody here," said Katie Lawhon, a
ranger in Gettysburg's public affairs office. That incident, which outraged
the local community, remains unsolved.

"We have automobile accidents," Lawhon said of the park, which, like other
national parks and battlefield sites, has public roads running through it.
"We've had cars hit monuments, cars total monuments. Sometimes, a
hit-and-run causes minor damage."

A week ago, Lawhon said, a hit-and-run driver hit a monument. "We knew from
the auto parts at the scene that it was a red Ford Mustang from the
mid-1990s, with damage to the front end on the right side," she said. "We
got that information out to the local press. A friend of the driver read it
and told his friend, 'You'd better 'fess up.' We're working with his
insurance company now, and he's facing some charges."

And then there's paint ball, which lately has become the most destructive
Civil War ammunition. Early this year, rangers at Chickamauga (which covers
more than 9,000 acres in two states, and has more than 600 monuments and
markers) discovered several monuments had been defaced by paintball guns.
Two local high school students, who'd spent an afternoon practicing their
target shooting, made the mistake of bragging about it at the store where
they bought their supplies. The proprietor overheard them and turned them in
to park officials.

"We were fortunate that we found out early," Weddle said after that
paintball damage was removed by pressure washing. "Because of the porousness
of the rock on the monuments, it's very difficult to remove any kind of
paint that's not water-based. Spray paint is oil-based."

That made the Veterans Day defacement of 2003 even more abhorrent. About two
dozen monuments, markers and monument plaques were spray painted. "This
wasn't just spray painting graffiti," said Weddle. "It was a variety of
words, phrases that touched on just about every ethnic insult you can
imagine."

The park put on a media blitz in local papers and on local TV and radio
stations. Neighboring communities were shocked, angered and offered help.
Civil War groups from across the country offered aid - financial and elbow
grease alike - to help remove the paint. Yet the case remains unsolved.

"This is horrible destruction. These are just punks who don't feel good
about themselves," said Dave Erickson, 43, a Marine Corps veteran from
Pisgah, Ala., standing in the park's visitors center and looking at a
display entitled, "Memorials to Valor, Casualties of Time."

Enclosed in glass are vandalized items from the park: a large stone acorn
and pieces of an eagle wing, both from Indiana monuments. Remnants from
Wisconsin and Maryland monuments. A state seal of Michigan. Ornamental
shells from a Pennsylvania Battery and the rifle removed from the 24th
Wisconsin Infantry Movement. The mustachioed head of that headless Maryland
soldier in "The Boneyard."

And some old pieces from "The Drummer Boy," one of four statues on the Ohio
Monument on Missionary Ridge, and long the most regularly vandalized piece
in the park. Vandals once toppled the little drummer boy from his base and
broke him into several pieces. His broken parts were reattached using
stainless steel dowels and epoxy, with aluminum-coated drumsticks replacing
the original granite sticks.

"I don't know if it's so much [intentional damage to] Union monuments as it
is the fact that Union states had more money after the war than Confederate
states," Weddle said. So, they built more statues. Each state was
responsible for funding and building its memorials. The Georgia State
Monument - at 87 feet, the tallest monument in the park - was dedicated in
1899 and stands in Poe Field along U.S. Highway 27, which runs through the
park.

"It's mostly prank vandalism," said Gerry Gaumer, 55, a veteran park ranger
now in the NPS public affairs office in Washington. "It just [often] seems
like shameless vandalism - a college prank or some local whacko."

According to Gaumer, there were 3,539 total acts of vandalism in all
National Park Service parks in 2000, not just Civil War sites. That
decreased to 3,479 in 2001 and 3,113 in 2002.

"We've haven't really had any vandalism," said Lloyd Morris, chief ranger at
Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. "We really don't have that many
monuments - probably five, if that many, in the entire park."

It's costly to replace damaged monuments. Costs also increase because
national parks try to authentically replicate the items. The Vicksburg,
Miss., National Military Park, however, faced a far more unique, and
troubling, dilemma in 1998.

Vicksburg - along with other national parks in 1999, including Gettsyburg,
Antietam, Md., and Manassas, Va. - was victimized by vandals who poured
vegetable oil on the four corners of several monuments.

"They were some crazy religious group from Evansville, Indiana, that said
they were on a mission from God," Gaumer said.

"They felt they were anointing the monuments with oil," said Patty Montague,
a park ranger in Vicksburg. The vandals were caught, fined and sentenced to
five years' probation, Gaumer said.

"Every single act of vandalism that occurs in the battlefield sites lessens
the opportunities for visitors to learn what happened here," said Jim Staub,
a Chickamauga ranger since 1981. Staub pointed out the grave site of the
only Civil War casualty known to be buried here: John Ingraham, a private
with the Georgia Volunteers, whose tombstone was broken in the early 1980s
and had to be replaced.

"Every time there's a theft at the battlefield," Staub said, "we're losing
pieces of American history."

"Why? Why does this happen? Why would anyone do this?" said Cindy Chestnut,
as she struggled to fathom random acts of vandalism on such hallowed ground.
"Teach your kids. As parents, be accountable. I'd kill my kids if they did
this."
 
http://www.ajc.com/