History is an old thing and it keeps
getting older. It has been around since the beginning. It looks into the future
beyond the point where light can reach, but it will always be there. Sometimes,
when you have a chance to hold it in your hands, history is fragile. It can
turn to dust as quickly as an old piece of paper and so you have to be careful
with it.
But when you can walk on it, history
becomes a robust living thing that speaks to you. Listen intently and you can
hear it tell you that, yes, they stood where you stand now and saw what you see,
making decisions that shaped the world you live in now.
Right now.
My wife and I have visited the
Gettysburg National Military Park annually since 2009 and I have attended the
Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College since 2011. Our annual calendar is planned
around Gettysburg and the CWI. The CWI is an annual convention, gathering
together students of the War with the leading scholars and authors on the
subject. Whatever the hot topic is among Civil War researchers, we hear about
it during those five days. I simply will not miss it.
I am blessed with the World’s
Best Wife, Amy, who enjoys visiting the town of Gettysburg. There
are some nice places to eat and we both enjoy the charm of small-town America;
the warm and friendly people who seem happy to meet us.
You make friends at the CWI and if you
become a regular you look forward to visiting with other regulars each year. I’ve
sat next to Bob Evans since I started attending the CWI. We’re both former
sportswriters and we have a great deal to talk about. My life-long pal, Buck
Weber, has caught the CWI bug and now he attends as often as he is able. Buck
lives further away from Gettysburg than Amy and I and so he has a harder time
getting there. Buck, Bob and I all take notes on the lectures and I frequently
catch myself dropping my pen and looking at the other guys.
“I didn’t know that,” I’ll whisper to
the other guys. “Did you?”
“No.”
“Geez, now I have to go see it.”
It’s like that at the CWI. The
learning curve never really flattens out. The fact is that the curve shouldn’t flatten out. This year’s
presenters include Gary Gallagher, Carol Reardon, Wayne Motts, Ed Ayers and Earl
Hess. How can you help learning with that group teaching you? The authors and
historians, aka the presenters, are very approachable. The CWI matriculation
includes dine-in events, which are small groups of attendees eating dinner with
some of the historians each year and I have been lucky enough to be included several
times. It is an amazing experience, discussing a specific historic point with a
well-known historian and a small group of students like yourself.
The CWI experience also includes battlefield
tours. My tours have included the battlefields at Antietam and Manassas, the
defenses around Washington DC and other sites. There are always tours of
Gettysburg as well.
If my favorite part of the CWI is the
lectures, the most expensive thing I do is peruse the books on sale. I shudder
to think how many hundreds of dollars I have spent on books at the CWI through
the years. One year, when we lived further away than we do now, I had to mail
most of the book purchases home. No big deal, but I had to decide what books
were coming on the plane with me and which ones were going home to wait. What a
tough decision!
You can check the CWI out at https://www.gettysburg.edu/civil-war-institute/index.dot.
Got any questions? The phone number is there to be seen and used, as is the
email address. Check out the CWI yourself. It is an experience you’ll enjoy and
you’ll probably want to do it again.
Thanks for reading. Hope to see you at
the CWI!
