THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506170285
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
During the Civil War my forebears sided with the Union. When I was 10, however, I betrayed my family loyalties by falling in love with Johnny Reb, William Couper's heroic bronze statue that has gazed defiantly northward from the top of Norfolk's Confederate Monument since 1907.
My introduction to Johnny, who epitomized all that was noble in the heroes of the fairy tales I was then beginning to enjoy, took place when I peered out a fourth-floor window of the old Miller, Rhoads & Swartz department store on Main Street. I had accompanied my mother to the store's corset department. While she sought a female harness that would give her a semblance of an hourglass figure, I sashayed over to a window for a bird's-eye view of Commercial Place.
Instead, I was confronted at eye level with Johnny Reb's ruggedly handsome countenance. Until then he had only been a nondescript green blob atop a lofty granite pillar when I came over by ferry from Berkley.
Now, for the first time, I was eye-to-eye with Johnny, and even though his proud face was streaked with verdigris, the indomitable courage of the Boys in Gray he symbolized filled me with wonder.
Soon afterward, when I avidly devoured Thomas Nelson Page's ``Two Little Confederates,'' the derring-do it featured, plus my recently acquired admiration for Johnny Reb, made me want to know more about the monument's history. Long-cherished hopes of erecting a suitably splendid memorial to the Lost Cause in Norfolk became a reality in 1898, when sufficient funds had been raised to make it possible. In January of that year, the City Council approved use of a space at the north end of Commercial Place as a site for the monument. The cornerstone was laid on Feb. 22, 1899, the 32nd anniversary of the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as Confederacy president.
The monument was designed by Couper Marble Works of Norfolk. The original plan called for it to be topped with a heroic statue symbolizing Peace. The early design also called for the monument to be adorned around its base with four life-sized bronze figures representing a Confederate sailor, infantryman, cavalryman and artilleryman. Money was scarce, however. So the committee finally settled for the 15-foot statue of Johnny Reb by William Couper (1853-1942), a European-trained sculptor and a member of the Norfolk family who designed the monument.
Johnny was unveiled on May 16, 1907. Col. Walter Heron Taylor, Gen. Robert E. Lee's former aide-de-camp, pulled the rope that revealed the statue for the first time to a cheering crowd. Originally a focal point in the downtown area, Johnny and his monument were defiant affirmations of the heroic, but misguided, Southern cause. Eventually the tides of progress abandoned the area, and by 1924 it was proposed that the memorial be moved to another location.
This elicited such resounding Rebel Yells that the resolution was hastily tabled. In June 1954, the matter was again broached. Norfolk Mayor W. Fred Duckworth raised the hackles of area sons and daughters of Dixie by referring to Johnny and his pedestal as a ``glorified pigeon roost.'' Still, it was not until 1964-65 that the monument was finally taken down.
That was a fortunate turn of events for me, because Johnny was temporarily deposited in the courtyard of what is now the Chrysler Museum. Since he was still my beau ideal, and his enforced descent to terra firma gave me an opportunity to examine him at close range, I visited him frequently. While there, Johnny received a thorough cleaning. Six years later, after the monument had been moved a little farther east, Johnny was again hoisted to his airy perch.
Meanwhile, the store from whose fourth-floor window I first gazed into his defiant face had been demolished, thereby precluding any further intimate hero-worshiping on my part. But that hasn't stopped me from trying. Even though I am 85, I still visit the monument area frequently. There, using a pair of opera glasses, I delightedly relive that initial acquaintance with Johnny, the statue that has come close over three-quarters of a century to transforming me from a hereditary Yankee into a fire-breathing Dixiecrat. by CNB