ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 23, 1996 TAG: 9604230121
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
STUDENTS AT MASON'S COVE Elementary School saw a re-enactment Monday that described both sides of a war that divided the Union.
Fifth-grader Jason Keene thinks Virginia was on the wrong side of the Civil War. He's not one to stand on state and regional loyalty.
"I like the North. We were a bad state - we wanted slavery," said Jason, a pupil at Mason's Cove Elementary School in Roanoke County.
Some other fifth-graders in the county also wondered Monday whether Virginia was on the right side, but they were more interested in what the war was like than in the political and moral issues.
They got a feel for the uniforms, guns, cannons, tents, food, music and wagons of the North and South at a Civil War Day at Glenvar Elementary School.
They heard speakers describe the soldiers, weapons, medicine, music and women of the war. They saw re-enactors fire muskets and cannons - the sound boomed over the school's playground and the smoke billowed. And they sampled hoe cake, made from corn meal, cooked on campfires just as it was in the Civil War.
They learned about the dark and unglamorous aspects of the war as well as the idealistic and romantic side.
"Military hospitals were almost literally gates of hell," said Paul Maynor, a Civil War re-enactor from Richmond. "There was so much blood on the floor that they would put down sawdust so shoes wouldn't get caked with blood."
Some soldiers who didn't want to fight would pay someone to knock out their teeth, he said. Without teeth, the soldiers couldn't rip open cartridges for the muskets, so they couldn't be on the battlefield. They would be assigned other duties.
Some children brought their cameras to get pictures of the flags, uniforms, guns, cannons, grenades and other artifacts.
"I don't know that much about it, but it was kind of a war between different states," said Travis Slusser, a pupil at Mason's Cove school who was snapping pictures.
David Wymer, social studies supervisor for county schools, said the daylong program was designed to bring the Civil War to life for the children. The idea began at Glenvar three years ago and has been expanded to include fifth-graders in the county's 17 elementary schools.
"We bring in the re-enactors with the weapons and other artifacts to help give the children more insight into the war," Wymer said.
Fifth-graders from Fort Lewis, Glen Cove and Mason's Cove were brought to Glenvar for Monday's activities. There will be a similar program each day this week for four or five schools.
Maynor and the other re-enactors put on the educational programs for schools and other organizations as a part-time vocation. Maynor is a former banker who said he is between jobs because of a corporate downsizing.
"I love doing this," he said. "If I could do it full time, you wouldn't see me back in a bank."
Ken Chandler, who is self-employed, said he has been interested in the Civil War since he was a boy, but he didn't become a re-enactor until a few years ago.
Annette Wetzel, a public health nurse who works with Maynor and Chandler in the re-enactments, demonstrated Civil War campfire cooking. She mixed corn meal and cooked hoe cake in a pan over open flames.
Civil War soldiers might have liked the bread, but the fifth-graders didn't.
"It's awful," said Rachael Roosma, a pupil at Glenvar. Lindsey Mills, another Glenvar pupil, said the bread was OK, but not as good as a hamburger bun.
Curley Ennis, a folk musician and musical historian at Explore Park, gave the children a sample of the songs and music popular among Civil War soldiers. The banjo, fiddle, jaw harp and guitar were favorite instruments.
Ennis said the song "Dixie" was written by a Northerner, and that President Abraham Lincoln liked it. One of the musical ironies of the war is that the banjo was introduced in the United States by slaves from Africa, he said.
Chandler told the children that movies and television shows about the Civil War can be entertaining, but they should not be relied on for information about what it was really like.
"If you want to know all of the facts," he said, "you've got to do a lot of reading and research."
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ARNE KUHLMANN/Staff. Ken Chandler, in Confederate gray,by CNBand Paul Maynor, in Union blue, fire rifles Monday as part of a
Civil War re-enactment for students at Mason's Cove Elementary
School. color.