A Loyal Following

On Thursday, I went to the funeral of Charles Poland, a beloved history teacher, who passed away at the age of 90. I wrote about him on Tuesday and have mentioned him many times over the years. The funeral was in Purcellville, not far from where my sister used to live. Then we formed a car caravan and rode out to Ebenezer Cemetery in Bluemont.

The ride felt familiar although most of the territory was new to me. Our field trips with Dr. Poland were carried out in a similar way: car following car down rural roads into the middle of nowhere. We passed homes and farms. At one point I thought I heard goats and glanced over and saw some standing on top of a car in a farmyard! 

Finally we reached a country cemetery, which seemed poetically appropriate. Dr. Poland often ended his tours at a cemetery where Civil War soldiers were buried, where he would discuss the losses of whatever campaign we were studying. Even though he made a career teaching and writing about the Civil War, he made sure we understood that it was a terrible and wasteful war. 

I picked out three more pictures from past tours to show you. The first one amuses me because group members are studying a map after we took a wrong turn near Cold Harbor. That rarely happened because Dr. Poland and his wife Betty drove the routes on a previous weekend to plan all the stops. He’s second from left in the picture.

When I first started taking his classes in 1989, I feared getting separated from the group because we had no cell phones or GPS. We only had small sketched-out maps, not to scale, and verbal directions. I only got hopelessly lost one time and that was in Newport News. 

I took these classes for 23 semesters, typically in the spring. It took eight years to complete all the eastern campaigns, and at that point I thought I was done, but a classmate called me and ask me to go again because he often rode with me and was afraid of getting lost by himself. So I did the whole series again, and then there were additional semesters covering specialized topics like guerrilla warfare and Civil War hospitals.  So I kept going until Dr. Poland retired. I loved these trips.

I wasn’t the only regular. There were people who started the courses before I did and kept on going almost until the end. This sort of travel could be strenuous so adult students sometimes found it became too hard to keep doing. Quite a bit of walking was required, and I remember getting exhausted.

(The CDP Theme is Shadows. Also Sharing with Shadow Shot Sunday.)

Dr. Poland usually wore a hat, and I quickly learned that it was important to have one for sunny afternoons. I also learned to carry sunscreen, water, snacks, and insect repellent. 

Today’s final photo is from 2009. It was a pleasure to see some of my old classmates at the funeral, and they were in this Appomattox photo: Jon and Sheryl W., Pam, John B., plus Martha and Betty. 

Notes: My Civil War Field Trips website was about these tours. Eventually I gave it up for the easier task of blogging.

I also wrote book reports for homework and turned them into reviews on Amazon, which was known mostly as a bookstore in those days. This started my hobby of writing reviews, which I still do.

Dr. Poland recently completed a book on Animals in the Civil War. I have ordered a copy.