Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 26, 1994 TAG: 9402280273
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Bob Larate, a Civil War collector and dealer, has spent many hours studying the regimental battle flags that hang on poles in Lee Chapel, over a statue of Robert E. Lee.
He's studied the fibers, the colors, the workmanship. And he's thought about the young men who died following the banners into hailstorms of bullets.
"I never left that chapel without having an emotional experience," Larate says.
Now the flags are leaving Lexington.
The flags' owner, the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, has decided to take them back.
Washington and Lee University will hold a ceremony Tuesday to replace the original flags with reproductions - and a university official says the real banners won't be coming back.
That has upset some Civil War enthusiasts in Lexington, a town where Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson are buried and just about everybody seems to be obsessed with the Lost Cause.
Larate blames W&L for allowing the flags - which may be worth as much as $750,000 each - to be spirited away from their place of honor.
The Rockbridge Advocate magazine has gone so far as to suggest that the museum "legally stole" the flags and that Washington and Lee is staging "a nice little ceremony to honor the theft."
The museum's director, Robin Reed, says that's not what's happening. He's perplexed by the criticism.
"I guess I'm a little bit concerned that people are perceiving that we're coming in like horsemen in the middle of the night to take away the Lee Chapel flags."
Asked if the flags we're coming back to Lexington, Reed said, "No decision has been made on that one way or the other. Our discussion with Lee Chapel is that this is something we need to sit down and discuss."
Pressed on the question, he says, "We have never told Lee Chapel we are taking the flags and they wouldn't come back. That has never once been considered."
He said the one sticking point might be that the flags have been hanging on poles in the open air. That's not good for them. They'll start to disintegrate if they're not preserved in glass boxes, he said.
"All we're tying to do is make sure these flags are around for future generations," he said. "If they want the flags back to be replaced on the poles, then that's not going to happen. That's the only thing negative that we've said."
Restoring such items typically takes "a year, year and half," he said. But "it's hard to put a timetable on it . . . Those flags need to be in a state of rest for a period of time."
Tom Litzenburg, chairman of the university's committee on special collections, said there never was a plan to return the flags to Lee Chapel after they were restored.
"We did not ask for them to be brought back," Litzenburg said. Displaying them in glass cases "doesn't suit our environment. We do not have the space to display them other than in a hanging arrangement."
Keeping them hanging would "simply not be responsible," he said, so "we're very amenable partners to this agreement" to remove the flags.
The museum lent the flags to the university, through the Daughters of the Confederacy, in the 1930s.
"This is painful," said museum spokeswoman Kathleen Clement Carter, whose office telephone number's last four digits are 1-8-6-1.
"People really value these Confederate artifacts. We value them and want to preserve them. . . . It's hard when people think that something is theirs, and then they find out it's not."
This sort of controversy is not unusual in the museum world, she said.
None of that stops Larate - a 1958 W&L graduate and proprietor of Lexington Historical Shop - from being angry at the university as well as the museum.
"Nothing adds up. There's just no full disclosure. This seems to be a W&L way to do business. They are making their decisions in private and then not disclosing all the facts."
He has been joined in his Pickett's charge against the flag deal by Doug Harwood, the irreverent editor of the Rockbridge Advocate.
Harwood is an unlikely crusader for relics of the Army of Northern Virginia. He's a confessed Yankee not given much to flag-waving. He refers to Lee Chapel, in his typically smart-alecky way, as "St. Bob's Tomb."
But he says whatever your political views on the Civil War, "you can't help but get the shivers" if you spend any time in the upstairs roof that houses the flags and the Lee-at-rest statue. "I've seen people in there looking at those things crying," Harwood says. "They're such a symbol of the war. The flag bearers were about the first people the sharpshooters tried to kill."
In an editorial that will appear in next month's Advocate, Harwood notes that two "disreputable characters" - including one man who had a tattoo of Robert E. Lee on his left arm - had recently been charged with trying steal two of battle flags from the chapel.
The editorial, written to appear after the flag-switching ceremony, says "a very reputable bureaucrat from Richmond legally stole the entire set. Washington and Lee staged a nice little ceremony to honor the theft. It's a twisted and outrageous story."
Harwood said that Reed, the museum chief, told him the museum has no money to restore the flags.
In an interview Friday, Reed said the estimated cost for the restoration, which generally includes chemical treatment, is $7,000 to $8,000 per flag. There's "an ongoing process" at the museum of deciding what needs to be restored and which things get restored first, he said. The flags will go on the list. "We'd have to give them a priority like everything else that has to be preserved."
Harwood argues that if the restoration were the true reason for the flags' removal, the museum could have allowed W&L to keep them - and let the university raise the money to restore and preserve them. "W&L's probably got that much in petty cash scattered around. It's awash in money. The Museum of the Confederacy is not."
W&L should have taken a stand, Harwood says. "If it was my chapel, I'd lock the dorrs and put up a sign saying, `This won't be unlocked until those heathens from Richmond leave us alone.'"
\ THE CONFEDERATE FLAGS IN LEE CHAPEL\ A BRIEF HISTORY\
1. Captured at Gettysburg July 3, 1863, by the 12th New Jersey Volunteers. Confederate unit unknown.
2. Captured at Winchester Sept. 19, 1864, by Company I, 6th New York Cavalry, 1st Division. Confederate unit unknown but possibly was part of Wharton's Virginia Division.
3. Captured at Fort Gilmore Oct. 29, 1864, by the 9th Maine. Confederate unit was the 3rd Regiment, Arkansas Volunteer Infantry.
4. Captured at Petersburg April 2, 1865, by Company E, 37th Massachusetts Volunteers. Confederate unit probably was the 37th Regiment, North Carolina Volunteer Infantry.
5. Brought to Richmond by Tad Lincoln, the son of President Lincoln, on April 4, 1865. Confederate unit unknown.
6. Captured during Appomattox campaign April 2-9, 1865, most likely at Farms Cross Roads on April 5. Capturing and Confederate units unknown.
7. Captured at Sailors Creek April 6, 1865, by 5th Michigan Volunteers. Confederate unit unknown.
8. Captured at Battle of Appomattox Station April 8, 1865, by 1st West Virginia Cavalry, 3rd Division, commanded by Gen. George Armstrong Custer. Confederate unit unknown.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***