The Civil War

In 1956, at the age of seven, my second grade school teacher Mrs. Blank read aloud an article about the last Civil War veteran, Albert Woolson, being brought from Duluth, Minnesota to Toledo, Ohio hospital for medical tests! This is when I conceived the idea which I shared with my teacher to go talk to Mr. Woolson, and shake his hand.

I talked my father into driving me to Toledo. I took a heavy reel to reel tape recorder and four tapes with me, which my dad had to carry. I conned a nurse into allowing me a few minutes with Mr. Albert Woolson by telling her I was a relative. When the door opened and looked upon his face, tears came to my eyes as my mind flooded with images of the Civil War! Out of his sight I started the first tape and he told me about when his father died of war wounds, with promise to his mother he’d never see action, he enlisted as a drummer boy in 1st Minnesota Regiment, replacing his father so family would receive a full military pension. “Want to hear my combat experience?”

I became excited. “One day I was drumming when our nearby cannons went off, I peed my pants and ran down the hill… that’s it kid!” The nurse said our time was up. Mr. Woolson reached his hand across the bed and said “Jimmy, shake the hand that drummed a drum during the Civil War!” Leaving I asked my dad why he had tears in his eyes? “Jim, I hadn’t fully realize the importance, til you shook Mr. Woolson’s hand!”

After saturday meeting of Albert Woolson, on monday I brought my reel to reel tape recorder and taped interview to Mrs. Blank’s second grade class, my proud and excited teacher (who was elderly at the time, having begun teaching career in a rural Ohio one room school house.) She had me play it for my classmates. (At the 2017 graduating class reunion at my Temple of Tolerance, I was surprised how many former students pleasantly remembered the sixty-one year old experience.) I recall one of my classmates asking me in Mrs Blank’s classroom, if I had regretted not having taken a camera and getting a photo with Mr. Woolson? Before I could answer, Mrs. Blank had said “There is not a photo which could be more powerful than the images of that unique experience in Jimmy’s mind and heart!” Her words brought tears to my eyes. After class, Mrs. Blank had hugged me and said “Jimmy, you realize having experienced this at such a young age, if you live as long as I have, you will be the last person on earth to have touched the hand of the last Civil War veteran!”

I do remember after this day in class, Mrs. Blank never had scolded me for my “day dreaming” in class. Perhaps she had understood what I might be “day dreaming” about!? The only thing I do regret is with Mrs. Blank’s help mailing my tape to National Archives to copy, requesting return of my original; it’s reception never acknowledged, or tape returned to me!? It made Mrs. Blank not just sad, but angry.

Later when I had the drum strap professionally treated, I recall the reverence with which the Columbus, Ohio preservationists had handed Woolson’s strap.