Respect

For the past few days, I have been driving through the park and noticing a cannon that had fallen over. Rumors are swirling as to how this happened. The central theme to all of these rumors is that an employee of the park banged into it with a mower....whether this is true or not, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that this cannon has fallen over.

Now these cannon barrels are heavy, weighing well over 1000 lbs, so when one of these falls over, it does damage. The damage done here seems to be that it lifted the concrete that the cannon was bolted into, right out of the ground.

So, what does this have to do with respect???? Well, fortunately, this appears to have been an accident involving park personel. But what if it hadn't? What if it had been a family having their children sitting on the barrel while Dad takes a picture? What if someone had gotten hurt?

So often I drive around the park and notice kids climbing on the cannons or the monuments and I wonder if they realize that these things are old. Most of the cannons are from the Civil War era....meaning that they are at least 140 years old. Most of the monuments at Gettysburg were placed in their spots by veterans of the War in the 1880's and 1890's....meaning that most of these monuments are over 100 years old. The park has taken great strides in taking care of these memorials to the past....but they can't keep them young forever. Things break, things fall apart, things age.

Sitting on a cannon or a monument is just asking for disaster. How do you know when one is going to break? You don't. They can do all sorts of things to reinforce the carriages but until they build a NEW one, we can't guarantee that it will hold extra weight.....and with new ones, you can't guarantee that either.

So, how is this being disrespectful? Well, these memorials to the past were placed here by the veterans so that we can remember what they did here. When we crawl on, over, or under one of these memorials, we are taking the risk of destroying that thing that the veterans wanted placed so that we would remember. We are crawling on, over or under our past. We are destroying what future generations will need in order to remember.

This doesn't just go for Gettysburg, it goes for all battlefields, historic sites, or town squares. We need to be careful of what the past has given us so that future generations can remember as well.