Wednesday, July 10, 2002
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Wednesday, July 10, 2002 |
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Fayette builder on a personal mission to honor forgotten soldiers, pioneers By SHERRI SMITH
Eddie Lanham, a man who understands the pull of powerful but unseen forces and how the inevitable passing of time can cloud even the best of memories, steadied the 130-pound white, marble headstone on its edge with one hand while he leveled the ground with the other. "A lot of people who set a headstone don't realize this, but you don't need to dig out a place in the dirt," Lanham said. "You just level it off and set the headstone down and let gravity sink it. If you dig it out too deep, in about 20 years it'll be covered with weeds." We stood in the middle of a grassy hill under a large oak tree where a raised, rock monument to Indian Agent Col. Benjamin Hawkins marks his burial plot. Col. Hawkins, possibly one of the most historically ignored personalities in our nation's history, built his headquarters, known as the Indian Agency, on this site in 1801 in what is now Crawford County. Here on his 8,000-acre compound, Hawkins spent the remaining 15 years of his life in vain, trying desperately to teach Creek Indians the skills necessary to integrate into the white man's culture. It was a goal that was doomed, for white settlers were intent to push the Creeks out of the region far beyond the Flint River which flows just beyond the tree line on the west side of the hill. To a passerby, it might have been an odd sight to see the seven of us gathered around the 1816 gravesite on this steamy Georgia morning in June 2002. Lanham, his wife Felicia, his cousin Pat McLeod with his wife Beatrice, publisher and author Fred Brown, Citizen photographer Beth Snipes and myself all here to witness the setting of the headstone. I shook my head in amazement thinking of how we had come to this moment. I've known Eddie Lanham for more than 20 years. At one time our children had played together; and with our families, we had spent many weekends watching ball games, playing tennis and socializing in Peachtree City. But children grow up and lives constantly take new directions, and Eddie and I had lost contact for a number of years. Kneeling by the grave was an Eddie I didn't know. Replacing the tennis court attire of our former days were jeans, tee-shirt, leather hiking boots and a light blue ball cap that read "Friends of the Hunley," the recently recovered Confederate submarine that sank just outside Charleston Harbor in 1864. Parked a few feet away was his taupe-colored, Ford Excursion where a History Channel cap lay in the middle of the dashboard. Just below, to the right of the steering wheel and at his fingertips when he was at the wheel, a laptop computer was mounted on a custom-made rack. At this moment, its DeLorme Street Atlas USA map software program was zoomed in on the Hawkins gravesite. Hitched to the Excursion was a 6x12, shiny black, spotless, enclosed trailer as big as a $19-a-day U-Haul, emblazoned with the name of his obsession, "Historic Research & Preservation," and sporting decals like "Save Our Battlefields" and "America Needs a Hero" with a picture of Robert E. Lee. This was an Eddie with interests I had never realized: A history lover and an active historical preservationist who spends numerous weekends scouring the countryside for old cemeteries and preserving the graves of soldiers who had fought in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Indian Wars and Civil War. If the soldier whether Union or Confederate, officer or enlisted did not have a headstone, Eddie ordered one from the Veteran's Administration and set it. The count was now up to 771. What led up to this morning at the Hawkins grave was a strange but rewarding series of events that began when I received a letter from Eddie last December. It seems he had just read "The Flint River" guidebook that Fred Brown and I wrote last year, and he was so intrigued with the character of Col. Hawkins that he and Felicia "got up at the crack of dawn and drove to the grave of Col. Hawkins, overlooking the river." After returning home, Eddie ordered a marble headstone with Hawkins's rank and service information and planned to set it at the foot of his grave. Eddie's letter was one of the most gratifying we had ever received about one of our books. Here was a reader, an old friend, who had read the book and been moved to take an action. I promised myself that I would call or write Eddie about it. It was April by the time I found myself near Jordan Homes, the homebuilding company that Eddie owns in Peachtree City, and decided to drop by. "You won't believe what I just picked up this afternoon and have in the back of my truck," said Eddie as he walked me outside. There was Col. Hawkins's headstone. We agreed that Fred and I would accompany him and Felicia to set the headstone in June. Adding to the bizarreness of the headstone's arrival was an e-mail from Eddie a few weeks later saying that his cousin was coming up from Gainesville, Fla., and would go with us to set the headstone. It seems Pat McLeod was the great-great-great-grandson of Murdock McLeod, Benjamin Hawkins's head surveyor. "We realized it," said Pat, "when Eddie and I were doing family research. Murdock lived in Bryan County, just west of Savannah, and traveled back and forth across the Georgia frontier to work with Hawkins." McLeod's work also took him into the Indian Territory to retrieve stolen goods from Indian raids. McLeod had died from consumption the same year as Hawkins, 1816. Over the years Eddie and Felicia have traveled from South Carolina to Texas, carrying and setting more than 750,000 pounds of marble headstones. A couple years ago, they set one for an unknown Union soldier in Heard County. The soldier, probably from Indiana, had been a part of McCook's Raid, which passed through Fayette County. The soldier fought the Battle of Brown's Mill below Newnan and later died at Felicia's great-great-grandfather Jacob Brown's plantation. The Lanhams located the gravesite under a huge poplar tree on the family property. Part of their research had been based on an article in Brown's Guide to Georgia published by Fred more than 20 years ago. So on this summer morning, I had followed Eddie and his entourage from Brooks in south Fayette County down to where Ga. Highway 128 crosses the Flint River. A man with a quest: a soldier to be honored. After leveling the dirt, Eddie carefully laid the headstone on the ground. "Col. Benjamin Hawkins. General George Washington's Staff, Revolutionary War. Aug. 15, 1754. Jun 6, 1816." Perching his glasses on his nose, he then read the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) location coordinates to Felicia as she recorded them in her notebook: "North 32 degrees 40 minutes 441 seconds. West 84 degrees 5 minutes 471 seconds." "Got it," said Felicia, closing her notebook. We silently walked away from the gravesite. I have wondered since what makes a person do something like this. What inner drive makes one seek out America's war dead and quietly order a headstone with personal money and spend another weekend morning placing it? "Eddie and I like standing in a spot thinking about what was here 150, 200 years ago," said Felicia. "We like to think about the people who lived here people like Hawkins and what they did with their lives and how they made our country what it is today." Some might call it an obsession, but I think it's patriotism, that powerful, unseen gravitational force that pulls us back to our roots and shared values. Sometimes patriotism comes in obscure and unpredictable expressions of love of country and respect for those who have died to protect our freedom and way of life. Patriotism is at the heart of Eddie and Felicia Lanham's actions when they set out on a Saturday morning to place a headstone for a fallen soldier. Few, if anyone, even the descendents, will ever know what these two people have done. There won't be even the small amount of fanfare that this particular headstone brought about. The world is a different place from when I first knew Eddie Lanham. We have all changed greatly. Me. Eddie. This entire nation. And in this post-Sept. 11 world, we are all searching for ways to express the love we feel for this country. We hang flags from our homes and car antennas and allow the tears to flow when we sing "God Bless America." But Eddie Lanham has been diligently expressing his love of country for a number of years now. At least 770 previous times, he has spent his day as he did that June morning by the Flint River, going about his duty of settling headstones onto a level ground and making sure that the passing of time and the pull of gravity do not obscure from memory the names of those who have died for America.
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