The Dragoons of SCV Camp 1524 enjoyed their monthly camp meeting on Thursday evening the 13th of June. A couple dozen were in attendance including three potential new members who were submitting paperwork to join the SCV. This supports new Camp Commander Grooms' stated desire to grown membership. Compatriot Rob Schwartz played his guitar and sang songs including Dixie before the meeting while everyone arrived. Commander Grooms started the meeting with an invocation followed by Color Sgt Dennis leading everyone in the pledges and salutes to the US, Alabama and Confederate flags. Grooms then recited the SCV Charge with gusto before announcing some upcoming events including the Dragoons participating in the Prattville Independence Day parade, Pat Godwin's Nathan Bedford Forrest birthday party at Ft. Dixie on July 27th and, the Dixie Butt sale for the annual camp fundraiser with tickets available. New member S. Knight was sworn in which is a great event for the life of the camp; he has already attended meetings and helped at the Prattville Cityfest so getting involved early. Harold then read a letter from a community neighbor who thanked the Dragoons for helping to care for the Robinson Springs cemetery and noted our good work is being noticed. Compatriot Tyrone Crowley then gave a report out on his attendance at the Alabama Division Reunion which was held on June 1st in Foley. He encouraged new members to attend one of these conventions to get a better understanding of the vision for the SCV as the foremost Confederate heritage group. Tyrone read the minutes of the convention as part of his presentation. Lt Tyler Suttle then introduced the guest speaker for the meeting, professor Grover Plunkett who spoke on the importance of monument preservation for remembering our history.
Dr. Plunkett began by saying that during Reconstruction, Southerners would greet each other on the street by saying , "Never forget". He then illustrated the similar message conveyed by the most common epitaph on cemetery headstones, "Gone but Not Forgotten". He defined a monument as an object which causes us to think, to imagine what history was like at the time. Communists and Marxists remove monuments, why? So that the populace under their control will not remember the prior history and historical figures. The cultural Marxists in America today attempt the same erasure. Many today don't understand why the monuments were originally erected. Dr. Plunkett recalled the story told in Joshua 4:1-24 of the Israelites crossing the Rover Jordan with the arc of the covenant as God miraculously provided a path stopping the flow of the river and God instructed them to place 12 stones from the river, symbolic of the 12 tribes of Israel there to commemorate the event, for future generations to never forget God's power to overcome obstacles and his love for his people. But today, the stones are gone. But we do not forget this story as it is memorialized in the Bible.
In the period 1866-1880 many monuments were erected across the South to honor the Confederate dead but it was actually a former Union officer President William McKinley who helped properly bury and care for the final resting place of Confederate veterans saying, "Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we feel for each other. The old flag waves over us in peace with new glories." The Congress authorized that Confederates too could be buried at Arlington. The following presidencies authorized and constructed the Reconciliation Monument at Arlington, a memorial of national unity which was designed by a Jewish sculptor and featured a woman crowned with a wreath or olive branches symbolizing peace. And yet recently the Naming Commission authorized by the woke Marxist administration in Washington DC wantonly removed this great historic monument. Monuments continue to be attacked and removed as an affront and offense. Why? They want to remove memorials which we want to preserve for our children to learn of their history and heritage and we as Sons and the SCV must not forget. We must memorialize our ancestors and heritage even in our very homes and share with our children what our family and generations has provided. Memorials need not be pieces of stone but can even be stories we tell and the perpetuation of those principles and emulation of those virtues of our Confederate forebears as the SCV Charge implores us.
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