Livetweeting a journalists’ tour of the Gettysburg battlefield

Marc Charisse, Civil War buff and editor of The Evening Sun in Hanover, Pa., and I livetweeted a Gettysburg battlefield tour on June 2.

I blogged my reflections on the battlefield visit (and earlier tours I’ve taken). My companion also blogged about our day in Gettysburg. I also blogged a text of my keynote speech to the journalists that evening. Here are Marc’s and my observations as we toured the battlefield:

 

Saturday, 6/2/12 in Gettysburg

My companion was in involved with the Pennsylvania Press Conference until mid-afternoon. But after a rainy night, the morning was crisp, clear and too perfect to sit around the hotel waiting for him to join me.

I got to the downtown square with plenty of time to explore the Farmer’s Market after a nice breakfast a the Ragged Edge Coffee shop. It’s always fun to check out the booths, but since we were traveling I didn’t pick up any of the luscious-looking strawberries or crisp, bright greens, tempting though they were. I also enjoyed walking around the downtown streets.

There is something of a tourist-trap element in Gettysburg. There are lots of t-shirt shops and it’s true that you could eat your weight in ice cream and fudge. But the history is still there. Pick any random street and walk down it. You’ll find plaques in front of the buildings that stood at the time of the battle, and sometimes a story to go along with it. I stopped in at the a shop called the Union Drummer Boy, where you can buy any number of Civil War artifacts, from mini balls to muskets, something that seems to me both a little sad, and a little ghoulish. It gave me pause, looking at tree trunks embedded with cannon balls, and chunks of wood peppered with lead shot, at the courage or foolishness of the men who rushed head-long into them.

Before I left downtown, I toured the David Wills House, where President Lincoln spent the night before, and put the final touches to, his Gettysburg address. As a writer, I was amused by one of the videos, which told that Lincoln’s words received mixed reviews. One newspaper declared it, “vulgar jargon,” another twisted Lincoln words, saying we did not need a “new birth of freedom, but a new president.” But one scribe got it right, declaring it a “brief but immortal speech.” (The video didn’t credit which newspapers gave those opinions.) As a kid, I memorized the Gettysburg Address, and the words came back to me as they were recited on the video. It is a masterful piece of writing, and it never fails to move me.

That afternoon I joined my companion along with a group from the conference for a tour of the battlefield. Our guide, Richard Goedkoop, was friendly and superbly knowledgable, and he wove in newspaper accounts of the fight as we made our way from site to site.

Military stragedy is lost on me. I don’t even play chess well, let alone grasp the fine points topography advantage and artillery power. But even I could see the strategic advantage of Cemetery Hill and Little Round Top. When we reached the end of the tour, and story of the Pickett’s Charge, we looked across the open field from the Union side, toward the Viriginia Monument. That’s where the Confederate troops massed, where they launched their last attempt to break the Union forces. Richard read newspaper war correspondents’ accounts of that third day of battle.

Gettysburg is a busy place. There are lots of tourists. We heard some laughter, people calling to each other, yelling kids, a barking dog or two, and even a repeating honking horn from someone’s mistaken thumb on the panic button of a car remote. But when Richard stopped reading, it suddenly became very quiet. Looking across that open, sunny field, it seem to me a faint vibration rose, a lingering energy of violence and horror. So many men died there. It was the battle that broke the back of the Confederacy.

What drives soldiers in moments like that to pick up their weapons and rush head-long into the cannon’s mouth? Patriotisim to their country? Loyalty to their commrades? Did any of them wonder how they got there? Were any of them apalled at the volume of death and destruction? Did they know, as they fought so ruthlessly, that the tragedy they were creating would hang like wisps in the air to this very day?

It’s a train of thought that haunted me into the next day, when my companion and I decided to visit Antitam as well.

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With the battlefield behind him, guide Richard Goedkoop reads press accounts of Pickett's Charge.

Gettysburg: We can’t forget what they did here

Gettysburg Battlefield: Little Round Top

This is why Little Round Top was important: You can see the whole Gettysburg battlefield from there.

I wonder how many different tours of the Gettysburg National Battlefield you can take before it starts getting old.

I took a bus tour with the Pennsylvania Press Conference Saturday, my fifth tour, and heard a perspective I hadn’t heard before. Richard Goedkoop, our guide, covered lots of battlefield history I had heard before. But he provided a different twist, tailored to the group of journalists he was leading.

More on Goedkoop’s tour shortly. But first, I’ll review the other ways I’ve toured the battlefield.

First, about a decade ago, I met my oldest son, Mike, at the historic battlefield. I had an extra day on a business trip to Philadelphia, and Mike was living in Washington. Like the Union and Confederate armies (only moving much faster), we converged on Gettysburg. We paid for a bus tour, led by one of the many licensed battlefield guides (whose name I’ve long forgotten). Continue reading

Dad and Ike: military men who enjoyed painting

My father, Chaplain Lucas W. Buttry, served a career as an Air Force chaplain, his largest stretch with President Eisenhower as commander-in-chief.

I couldn’t help but think of Dad again and again as we wandered the grounds and home of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farm Friday in Gettysburg, Pa.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Both grew up in small Midwestern towns, then saw the world serving in the U.S. military. Both liked TV Westerns. Both avoided political partisanship (well, until Ike joined the Republicans and ran for president). Both enjoyed painting.

Luke Buttry served in the Army Air Corps under Ike’s command in England during World War II. After going to college on the GI Bill and then graduating seminary, Dad served as an Air Force chaplain when Ike was commander-in-chief.

As a chaplain and later as a civilian minister, Dad was careful not to express political opinions or affiliations. He believed that ministers should preach the Gospel and minister to the needs of their people. Political affiliation would alienate people of whichever party he didn’t support, so Dad avoided taking sides. He was adept at making his sermons timely by addressing current issues without showing a consistent bias.

Ike was a political independent as a general, wooed by both parties as a presidential candidate following World War II. Even when he became a Republican to run for president, he was easily the least partisan president of my lifetime.

Continue reading

The Eisenhower farm: a window to Ike’s and Mamie’s personalities

This weekend brings us to Gettysburg, PA. My companion is speaking to the Pennsylvania Press Conference tomorrow.

We got an early start, dropping Duffy de Dog at his dog resort in the morning so we could make it to Gettysburg in time for a tour of the Eisenhower Farm with the group in the afternoon.

The day was muggy and overcast, a good indicator of the storms that are rolling through a huge swath of the East tonight. But riding down the road next to my companion is one of my very favorite things to do, even if the beautiful green, rolling hills were not set off at their best. We had no trouble filling the time. We talked about our kids, the newspaper industry, my writing, the newspaper industry, the twist and turns of my companion’s career and, oh yeah, the newspaper industry. It was just starting to sprinkle when we arrived. Continue reading

A visit to the Eisenhower farm — and a lesson in leadership

General Dwight D. Eisenhower meeting with Generals Patton, Bradley, and Hodges in Germany, March 1945. Photo from historicalstockphotos.com

I have a suggestion for today’s politicians: Tour the retirement home of Dwight D. Eisenhower in Gettysburg, Pa. And ask for Park Ranger John Joyce to be your tour guide.

Dwight D. Eisenhower. Photo from historicalstockphotos.com

Ike’s leadership would be an example to leaders of both parties. In a time of extremism and conflict (remember McCarthyism?), he was a calming, unifying influence. He was a Republican who didn’t diminish or shrink from using government properly: to build our national infrastructure (the Interstate highway system) and to uphold civil rights. He knew how to end a war. He placed country above party. He thought big, but not about himself.

On a rainy afternoon, Joyce provided insights into Ike’s leadership style to a tour group of Pennsylvania editors visiting the Eisenhower National Historic Site outside Gettysburg. His guiding leadership principles, according to Joyce, author of the Ike Blog: Continue reading

Nova Scotia: You’re so scenic

Ah, Nova Scotia!

Mimi says:

I was a kid when the song “You’re So Vain” was popular. In fact, I used to tease my then-boyfriend that he was so conceited, “you probably think this song is about you.” But for me the really exotic line, the one that fired my imagination was, “You flew your Learjet to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun.” Growing up in landlocked farm country, I wondered if I’d ever make it there, and what it would be like if I did.

Well, we’ve been to Nova Scotia four times now, and, although I’ve yet to see a total eclipse of the sun, I am happy to report that with each trip I love it more. As you drive up the coast, the coves and bays are beautiful, with colorful fishing boats reflected in their calm waters. But make no mistake; the open North Atlantic is wild there. At every tourist spot you’ll find maps of “The Graveyard of the Atlantic,” off Sable Island and books with names like Andrea Gail, Mont-Blanc and, of course, Titanic, in the titles. But this May was the first time we headed north to the rocky shores of Cape Breton. Continue reading

Cape Breton: Like Tofino, it’s worth the long drive

The Cape Breton Highlands

Steve Says:

My traveling companion and I have fallen in love with remote places on islands on each Canadian coast that we’ve visited in the off-season.

To reach Tofino, on the Pacific coast of Vancouver Island, we have traveled by plane to Victoria, by ferry to Sidney, both about a six-hour drive from Tofino, and by ferry to Nanaimo, a four-hour drive. All three routes, you spend about two hours winding through the mountains on a narrow but spectacular old logging road. Piggybacking on my professional travel to British Columbia or Washington state, we have visited in January (twice, including our first visit), December, November, October and September. Our only summer visit, in August, was our only visit purely on personal travel, for our 30th wedding anniversary.

We’ve visited Nova Scotia four times now, but didn’t make it to Cape Breton on our first three visits. We had enjoyed the capital city of Halifax and the nearby Lighthouse Route on our earlier trips.

My companion loves the ocean and I love the mountains, and I knew Cape Breton would be a favorite (Canadians would say favourite) of both of ours. While we both enjoyed the Lighthouse Route on Nova Scotia’s southern shore, the Atlantic’s waves there were not as raucous as Pacific waves that enchanted her in Tofino. She’s an Iowa farm girl who can’t get enough of the ocean. I thought the eastern shore of Cape Breton might provide more crashing waves. Not to mention cliffs and mountain vistas. I spent five years growing up in Utah and fell in love with mountains and canyons. Continue reading