
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 8, 1993                   TAG: 9308080002
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NOBODY WANTS TO BE A YANKEE

If we were going to re-create the brawl between David and Goliath, or the most recent Super Bowl, or the 1984 presidential campaign or the Persian Gulf War, and we needed bunches of actors to portray the participants, which roles would you wish for?

You'd want to be cast as David, or a Cowboy, or Ronald Reagan or George Bush, because everybody loves a winner, right?

We'd probably have to sweeten the pot to find a Goliath, a Bill, a Mondale or a Saddam Hussein. Maybe we'd have to dangle a bit more money or promise top billing on the marquee to entice someone to play the role of the hapless goof.

People are not dumb. They know it's better to be the stomper than the stompee.

Don't they?

Last weekend there was a Civil War battle reenactment at Green Hill Park. Sponsored by the Roanoke County Parks and Recreation Department, the event lured thousands of spectators and a few hundred participants.

They were re-creating a skirmish that led to the Battle of Hanging Rock.

In the big War-Between-theStates scheme of things, Hanging Rock was microscopic potatoes - roughly equivalent to a flat tire on a jeep in Algeria during World War II.

But it's all we had in the valley, and history is worth preserving, and what the heck - it's not like there's so much going on here during weekends that we'd turn up our noses at a battle reenactment. And so every once in a while we call in the guys in the scratchy suits and let them fire blanks at each other. It's better than watching the corn grow.

Now, the Civil War is allegedly over, and I can say with some historic certainty that the Union prevailed - even though that may not always be readily apparent in the Roanoke Valley.

Wouldn't it stand to reason that lots of folks would want to be Union soldiers, part of Major General David Hunter's detachment retreating toward West Virginia?

Au contraire, mon reader.

Gobs of reenactors offered to serve under Lt. Gen. Jubal Anderson Early, Rocky Mount's most famous attorney, marching under the Stars and Bars.

Plenty of gray, not much blue signed up.

Eddie Ford, among the organizers at the parks department, knew that for realism's sake, there would have to be more Yankees.

Faced with a glut of Rebs and a dearth of Yanks, organizers dangled a $125 bonus for each unit of a dozen or so wretches willing to don Union blue.

"That was to persuade Yankees to come down for the event," Ford said. "It was really just gas money."

Though there are some local Union reenactors - and some reenactors can go either way - most local buffs are more interested in pledging reenactment allegiance to Richmond than to Washington.

A skirmish toward the rear of the Union's retreating column, reenacted at Green Hill Park, set the stage for a Confederate victory at Hanging Rock.

But hey, Walter Mondale won Minnesota in 1984 and he still got stomped.

He'd probably prefer to portray Ronald Reagan in a reenactment.

by CNB