Memorial dedicated in Stafford
Date published: 1/9/2006
By CLINT SCHEMMER
When Jimmy Ghadban was a young man, working long days at two jobs in Prince William County, he'd nip over to the First Manassas battlefield, find a good spot and eat his bag lunch atop Henry Hill.
The place where blue and gray first battled is a quiet, scenic spot, and he liked it. Growing up and going to school in Virginia, Ghadban had come to appreciate the state's Civil War history and the beauty of its landscape.
This weekend, nearly 40 years later, that appreciation took on very solid form in eastern Stafford County--in the shape of a stone monument to men in blue and their sacrifices long ago.
As Ghadban and Glenn Trimmer, co-founder of Friends of Stafford Civil War Sites, pulled back a blue tarp from the marker, oohs and ahs of appreciation rose from the crowd. Eyes were riveted on 51/2 tons of the best gray Vermont granite, 9 feet long and nearly 7 feet high, topped by a star, symbol of the Union army's 12th Corps.
The $21,000 monument, probably the finest Civil War marker in Stafford and comparable to those on the Fredericksburg and Manassas battlefields, commemorates Redoubt No. 3 and the 12th Corps troops who constructed it.
The rectangular 70-foot-long, 12-foot-high earthwork stood on this ground until last spring, when it was leveled by a subcontractor employed by SYG Associates, Ghadban's home-building firm.
On Saturday, the developer--who lives in Nokesville and was shocked when he was told of the fort's destruction--came to make amends. He spoke only briefly, expressing his pride at being able to provide the monument at the subdivision he has since named Sentinel Ridge, and commending the work of Trimmer's group to commemorate the site.
"And I'm grateful for the commitment of the county of Stafford to maintain this monument in memory of our local history and our shared experience," Ghadban said. "We can do these brave men no greater honor."
A sense of civic duty
In an interview yesterday, the developer--who has been building homes in Northern Virginia and Maryland since 1971--said he thinks other builders would do the same.
"It's kind of in our blood. We all care, we really do care. We love Virginia.
We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, while it can never forget what they did here.
President Abraham Lincoln Nov. 19, 1863, at Gettysburg
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Date published: 1/9/2006
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