I have had a couple of days off from work so I am able to do this in addition to other work that needs to be done. Yesterday I drew an angel from a memorial near Mirror Lake. It would be hard to top that angel because that statue is just so graceful, so lovely.
However. Today there I am, driving very slowly down the path, Mozart on the car stereo, the sun shining, possibilities limitless, scanning the statues. And as if across a crowded room, I saw him.
Philip Bachert!
I knew instinctively, he was The One.
Of course I did not know his name. I found that out only when I approached the statue. It read: "Philip Bachert, 1840-1915. Wiedrich's Battery. 1st N.Y.L. Art. 1861-1865. G.A.R."
Before I began to draw I ate some lunch I had brought and I studied the statue. Then I got up and addressed Mr. Bachert. I thanked him for his service and then said that I hoped he would not mind if I drew him.
When I went home I looked everything up. Wiedrich's Battery was a Civil War outfit run by Michael Wiedrich, who came from Alsace-Lorraine where my mother's family came from, or Elsass as I have seen it spelled in German Catholic cemeteries. The whole battery was made up of German immigrants from Buffalo.
My friend at work Scott Scanlon even did a story about Wiedrich's Battery and what monsters they were on the battlefield of Gettysburg and Bull Run.
When I was leaving, I happened to see another Civil War monument. This other soldier fought in Mozart's Regiment.
Who knew there was a Mozart's Regiment in the Civil War?
The bad news: You have to go fight in the Civil War.
The good news: You get to be in Mozart's Regiment!
I will have to find out what is with that.
That will have to be a story for another day!
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