sep04

There will be NO REGULAR meeting on the third thursday of September 2004.

McGowan Camp Annual Fall Cookout at The Roper Plantation Saturday, September 25, 2004 5:00 p.m. - Fellowship, Food and Southern Music... Bring A Lawn Chair... Bring your family... Bring your neighbor... Bring a Dessert.

From downtown Laurens : go out South Harper St (Hwy 221 towards Greenwood), go thru traffic light at the Farley Ave intersection, and turn left onto South Harper St Extension . Go 3 miles, and turn right onto Burnt Mill Creek Road. Go one mile and turn left onto Roper Rd. Watch for gate to pond on the right.

From Clinton : go towards Laurens on Hwy 76, pass hospital, and turn left onto Holly Grove Church Road. At stop sign, turn right on A B Jacks Road, then left onto Brown Road. At end of Brown Road, turn left onto South Harper St Extension, then the next right onto Burnt Mill Creek Road. Go one mile and turn left onto Roper Rd., watch for pond gate on the right.

From Waterloo/Greenwood : Hwy 221 towards Laurens, pass Cold Point, and just past Tony's Storage turn right onto Lisbon Road. Go 3 miles, turn left onto Roper Rd. Pond gate is on the left, just down the road from the black mailbox with 425 on it.

Music provided by McGowan's Band

Y'all come now

heah!

Saturday morning, the 21st of August started out as a damp, potentially wet day. Six McGowan camp members decided to brave the elements anyway, (Southern dedication and perseverance), and made a successful day out of it. We loaded up five monuments at Verdin's, (would have been seven, but Dever talked me out of it), and headed to Waterloo.

We placed a marker on Delevere Watson's grave, (killed at Richmond), then moved on to the other side of Waterloo, at Old Bethlehem, where we set markers at the graves of Martin Hill and Lewis Saxon.

When we left Old Bethlehem, we went up the road a few hundred yards to visit another cemetery that we have two markers for. The best description of this place is pitiful. It is on private property, overgrown with trees, with only 3 readable stones, and they are down. There were at least 50-75 graves there, by my estimate, most marked by fieldstones and depressions in the ground. We will return there soon.

Traveling further up the county, our men installed a marker for John Kay at Poplar Springs. His old one was broken into several pieces.

We attempted to place a stone at the grave of Zimri Carter, at the Carter-Ellison cemetery off Hwy 25. The land had been clearcut last winter, and was an overgrown mess. A decision was made to return once we could clear enough of a path for access. This cemetery has been very much neglected and apparently vandalized in the past.

After enjoying a good lunch, (biggest cheeseburger I've ever eaten!) we called it a day. It never did rain.

Please plan to join us on September 18th, at 9:00AM behind Verdin's Farm and Garden, to help place some more stones on our Confederate ancestor's graves. This work is badly needed in Laurens county, and no one else is going to do it but us.

Gentlemen of the SCV:

During the dark days of World War II, Gabriel Heatter (the Paul Harvey of his day) opened his nightly national newscast - when the opportunity presented itself - with the hopeful and emphatic words, "There's good news tonight!"

Those words by the famous newscaster seem so very appropriate tonight as it was learned today that Gettysburg College of Gettysburg, PA, which was planning to hold an outdoor arts festival featuring the "lynching" of the Confederate battle flag, was forced to change its plans because of an SCV -generated firestorm of opposition.

The plan for the hateful desecration of our flag was hatched by a black radical activist art professor by the name of John Sims, who was to begin his offensive silly stunt on the college campus September 3rd.

He may have been hoping for the media publicity, but he likely didn't count on a bunch of "p-o'ed" descendants of Confederate veterans who had no intention of letting him get away with dumping on the flag.

Over the past number of days, the community of Gettysburg and Gettysburg College, learned the anger of the SCV via emails, telephone calls, as well as a lot of behind the scenes efforts to head off this hate crime against the flag.

Underscoring this effort was the real threat of an SCV economic boycott of Gettysburg which, in no uncertain terms, got the attention of the powers that be in that place. In turn, likely, those powers put pressure on the college that had essentially been thumbing its nose at the SCV.

The efforts to stop the flag idiocy were led by Commander in Chief Denne Sweeney, his staff, Brag Bowling, Henry Kidd, Paul Gramling and others including the Pennsylvania Division of the SCV and the local Gettysburg SCV camp.

Feeling the heat, the college this morning buckled to the probable demands of more level heads in the area and announced that Sims' flag desecretion would be moved indoors.

Then this afternoon, the petulant Sims, a visiting professor who was angered by the college's move to bring the display indoors, announced that he and his display would be leaving town.

Commander in Chief Sweeney in a conference call Monday night with his staff and ANV Commander Kidd, called today's events in Gettysburg a "major heritage victory."

This victory is attributed to the pressure of the SCV brought about by the intent to carry out an economic boycott against one of biggest and most profitable historic tourist sites in America, which is enriched to the tune of millions upon millions of tourist dollars each year.

Commander Sweeney expressed his deep appreciation to all who fired their electronic shots in this battle and those who worked behind the scenes.

Tonight, Commander in Chief Sweeney is on the receiving end of a lot of emails congratulating him for his determined stand in the face of some long odds.

Take pleasure in today's victory, but temper this pleasure with the realization that very likely we haven't heard the last from this sorry excuse for a college professor.

For decades to come Southerners will remember the atrocity this college committed against our flag and our heritage. We will never forget that it was Gettysburg College itself that committed a Hate Crime against everyone with Confederate ancestry. Gettysburg College has ruined its own reputation forever. The Mayor of Gettysburg, the merchants, the citizens, the Sons of Union Veterans, Union and Confederate reenactors and hundreds of SCV and UDC members all asked the College not to lynch the flag. They ignored everyone and lynched the flag themselves after the artist John Sims did not show. It was bad enough when the college was condoning this Hate Crime, but no one expected them to commit the act themselves.

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