Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Daily Diversion / Spurgeon Sons of Civil War Veterans Still Alive!
Posted by Ashley Spurgeon on Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:08 PM
I was driving along I-65 this morning, half-listening to a WPLN story about the remains of a Civil War soldier recently discovered at a Franklin construction site. But I soon did a comedy spit-take and nearly rear-ended the car in front of me when I learned that two sons of veterans would be on site for the re-interment. Living children of Civil War veterans? How intriguing and bizarre. The radio kindly did the math for me and confirmed that their fathers were very old when they were conceived and born to mothers not yet allowed to vote. From WPLN:
93-year-old Harold Becker of Grand Rapids, Michigan is the son of a Union soldier who fought in the Battle of Franklin, November 30th, 1864.James Brown of Knoxville is 97. His father was a private in the Confederate army and fought at Shiloh and Gettysburg. At the funeral service, Brown says he'll share stories passed down from his father....
Brown's dad, also named James Brown, was at Appomattox, Virginia when the Confederacy surrendered. He then walked home to Georgia with a knee injured by a mini-ball. It forced him to use a cane the rest of his life.
It's something of a fluke for any child of a Civil War veteran to be alive. Brown was born in 1912 when his father, who had remarried a much younger woman, was 71.
It's hard for me to imagine sharing the earth with people whose fathers were born a century before my father was born. You know, there are still three living veterans of WWI. I suggest they all have babies, right now, so their aged children can freak out my future grandkids as they fly their hoverjets to spacework.
Comments (13)
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Fun fact: As part of military training, servicemen are required to learn about the various veterans' programs offered by the Dept. of Defense, including pensions and widows benefits. The regulation states that recruits must learn about all active programs.
Well, the last widow of a Union soldier didn't die until 2003 (she lived her latter years in Tennessee; she married her husband when she was 18 and he 81). So, yes, I know all about the Civil War Widows' Pension.
Mrs. Janeway received a $70 check every two months until she died in 2003.
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You were on I-65? Were you near the Nathan Bedford Forrest art? That would have been so appropriate.
What did the spit-take consist of? Coffee? Coke? Apple juice? Red Bull? And how did the clean-up go?
Oh man, if I had been driving past the statue, I would have been so awed by serendipity that not even Jacqueline Fellows herself could have saved me from a crash.
It was just coffee I was drinking, but it's funnier if we all pretend it was whiskey.
"born to mothers not yet allowed to vote"
I think you're saying the mothers were young, but they could have been as old as the fathers and still not be allowed to vote, as the 19th Amendment wasn't ratified until 1920.
I was talking about the 19th amendment.
Fun Fact Number Two: Tennessee was the final state to ratify the amendment, and it passed by one vote. The legislator changed his vote at the urging of his mother.
My father-in law is 86 years old and he is the son of a Civil War veteran. His father was 82 when he was born! His father signed up in Dinwiddie County, Virginia...carried the battle flag in Pickett's Charge...fought in all major battles of the war...he was eventually captured at the Battle of Five Forks in Dinwiddie, Virginia. The war ended approximately 2 weeks later...he was parolled and walked back to his farm and continued farming.
that is all just so amazing. I ran across this while looking up remaining wwi vets so far i found the last american wwi vet lives in west virginia, can you imagine serving in 2 world wars. My son is in the army wich raised our intrest. God bless all our vets in the foreign wars, the wars on our soil, and our military police actions.
