Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 15, 1993 TAG: 9305170281
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NEW MARKET LENGTH: Long
The marker on the road directly across from the New Market Battlefield Military Museum reads: "New Market Battlefield Historical Park and Hall of Valor Museum 3/4 mi. ahead."
John Bracken, owner and curator of the Military Museum, says the sign is there because the Hall of Valor Museum down the road wants to divert business from his door.
Ed Merrell, executive director of programs for the Hall of Valor Museum, says the sign is there because the New Market Battlefield Military Museum stops folks from coming any farther up the pike.
The detailed map on the back of the New Market Battlefield Military Museum brochure does not acknowledge the existence of the nearby Hall of Valor Museum. The detailed map on the back of the Hall of Valor Museum brochure does not acknowledge the existence of the nearby New Market Battlefield Military Museum.
"He tells lies about us," says Merrell.
"They want me out of here," says Bracken.
Dueling museums. The small Shenandoah Valley town where a Civil War battle was fought 129 years ago is also the site of an ongoing institutional scrap. But history repeats itself in other ways as well this coming weekend.
Today and Sunday, New Market (population 1,405) will host its annual "Heritage Days," featuring the colorful Re-enactment of the Battle of New Market, a decisive Confederate victory that drove Union forces north through Mount Jackson.
Spread in the shadows of surrounding Massanutten and Blue Ridge mountains, what remains of the former battlefield has been bisected by Interstate 81, the long rolling green irrevocably ripped by a gray asphalt stripe.
At exit 264 travelers can take two quick rights and be on Virginia 305, a one-mile side road. Located on the left, first, is the square white New Market Battlefield Military Museum and, second, the round white Hall of Valor. These establishments and their superintendents offer considerable contrast.
Bracken, 51, raised in Virginia, is a self-taught history buff from childhood who never attended college. Short and stocky in a pink shirt and slacks, this junk dealer's son has been trading in historical artifacts since age 9, when he purchased a photograph of Robert E. Lee's horse. Bracken owned a succession of museums from Winchester to Harpers Ferry before buying battlefield land and building the New Market Battlefield Military Museum.
His one-man private enterprise is a glass cavern of exhibits which Bracken assembled and researched himself, right down to writing the text cards. It's eclectic but fascinating - The Washington Post pronounced the place "terrific" - a festival of 2,000 authenticated curiosities from the Revolutionary War to Operation Desert Storm. Items range from Alexander Hamilton's uniform coat to Gen. George Armstrong Custer's spurs to Nazi Field Marshall Hermann Goering's dress hat.
Merrell, 45, came to New Market three years ago from Greenfield Village outside Detroit, where he was manager of interpretation for the Henry Ford Museum. Corporate in a pin-striped suit, this salesman's son is employed by Virginia Military Institute, which owns the endowed Hall of Valor Museum and surrounding 280 acres of battlefield.
His consuming interest is less in history than in "educating the public." Merrell, who doubles as president of the Chamber of Commerce, concedes an important role of the property is public relations for VMI.
His operation seems more tourist center than museum, long on display posters and dioramas, short on true artifacts. The entire progress of the Civil War is cursorily outlined and illustrated with a few items like Lee's field stool.
An exhibit titled "The New Market Cadets of VMI" is featured - a hortatory account of student participation in the battle; but the most interesting element of the installation is the open ground beyond the building, where imagination reanimates the field with ghosts engaged in combat.
What actually took place here is dramatic enough without embellishment. On May 15, 1864, hastily summoned Confederate forces under Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge defeated a larger Union army sent into the Shenandoah Valley to disrupt communication and supply lines. Breckinridge enlisted local militia and 247 VMI cadets to expand his troops.
That's history; meanwhile, the new battle of New Market continues.
"They have tried to put me out of business since the day I began, says Bracken, whose museum opened in 1988. "When I first went to check the zoning on the land, they responded with a bulk mail campaign asking people to stop John Bracken from starting a commercial venture on this sacred ground. You'd think I was operating a massage parlor, not a museum."
Counters Merrell, who opened his museum in 1970: "Mr. Bracken for some reason hates VMI and takes every opportunity to attack it. He tells guests that we don't exist. He tells them that there's no other places in New Market to see, and in most cases they've arrived at his door with our brochure in hand, looking for us."
Bracken feels the role of the VMI cadets, whose average age was over today's draftable adulthood of 18, is vastly overplayed at the Hall of Valor. There phrases like the following abound, emblazoned on the walls: "Their exemplary courage and bearing created a legend." That legend makes 247 youths loom awfully large amid combined forces approaching 11,000 men, but Merrell acknowledges the hype.
"Because it was at a time when the Confederacy was in dire straits for anything to pump up their spirits," he conceded. "When the Corps of Cadets was used here in the battle, they became `the darlings of the Confederacy.' They put those boys on trains and took them to Richmond, wined them and dined them, held parties for them. So the myth became that they had single-handedly saved the day.
"In reality, the Corps of Cadets did what they were supposed to do, along with all the veteran Confederate troops on the field."
In fact, Bracken and Merrell might profit from burying the hatchet someplace else than in each other's heads, because both museums have something attractive to offer. They're less competitive than complementary: Bracken's serves up a wild panoply of arresting individual items; Merrell's provides a dramatic context and walking tour of the battlefield.
It is on that field that one senses something of what it must have been like, slogging over the open ground in the rain and smoke toward 17 ruthless artillery pieces arrayed upon the slope. The long grass still retains sufficient moisture to recall the muddy "Field of Lost Shoes," over which the regulars and cadets moved to hold the line and capture a field piece from retreating Federals.
As the visitor at last surmounts the crest, one big gun, its bore precisely chest-high, points like a finger of doom.
Beyond it, and all around, is a broad vista of old mountains and new subdivisions, with only the constant rumble of the interstate to recall the cannons.
by CNB