Each year, Graham Historical Society members take fourth-grade students on a tour of Bluefield, Va., with stops at various places where history was made. The stops include the New Deal era Post Office building with its tempera mural painting, “Coal Mining” (1942) by Richard Kenah, as well as the Linkous House.
Through the years, one of the favorite stops along the way has been the sanctuary of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on Logan Street. In recent years, Father Russell Hatfield, pastor of St. Mary’s, has had the honor of telling the story of the Robert E. Lee pulpit and explaining to the students how the town of Bluefield, Va., came to possess such an interesting artifact….
Wait until the NEA and Department of Education hear about this. This is totally politically incorrect. Why didn’t they take them to the Occupy protest in Richmond instead?
Every time I pass by Lexington, VA, I stop at W7L and pay my respects at the Lee Chapel. If a Saint is one whose life exemplifies Christian character and living, then Robert E. Lee is a Saint.
Make that “W&L”.
Evan,
Growing up in Richmond, VA, that is certainly what I and other fourth-graders were taught in Virginia history. He was right up there with St George, though higher than St Thomas and St Patrick. Citizens of the Old Dominion will know of whom I write.
Sophy,
Would that present-day fourth-graders were taught the same!
When I was doing Clinical Pastoral Education at a large hospital in East Tennessee some years back, I would often get blank stares when I would enter a patient’s room from a lot of the back woods folks who had come to the big city for some medical procedure. If I said I was the chaplain or an Episcopalian, they had no earthly idea what that was. I’d start by then just saying I was the “preacher,” which usually rang a bell. If that failed, I’d simply say that Robert E Lee was an Episcopalian, and that was an automatic “in” to the good ole boys in the room.
Who knew Robert E Lee was the little known 4th person of the Trinity?
As someone who has done time in the vestry barrel, I always thought it significant that my boyhood hero, General Lee, came home from a vestry meeting and had a fatal stroke. Colonel Wm Johnston’s account says that, toward the end of a three hour vestry meeting in a cold and damp church, General Lee, who had sat in a pew with his military cloak wrapped loosely around him throughout, realized that the church budget lacked sufficient funds for an increase in the Rector’s salary. When the Treasurer said that funds were still deficient, General Lee “said in a low tone, ‘I will give that sum'”. This from a man a greatly reduced fortunes following the war, one who had already given most generously to the Grace Church.
There is this story about Lee after the war that I like (enough to hope that it is even true):
[blockquote]One Sunday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, a well-dressed, lone black man, whom no one in the community—white or black—had ever seen before, had attended the service, sitting unnoticed in the last pew.
Just before communion was to be distributed, he rose and proudly walked down the center aisle through the middle of the church where all could see him and approached the communion rail, where he knelt. The priest and the congregation were completely aghast and in total shock.
No one knew what to do…except General Lee. He went to the communion rail and knelt beside the black man and they received communion together—and then a steady flow of other church members followed the example he had set.
After the service was over, the black man was never to be seen in Richmond again. It was as if he had been sent down from a higher place purposefully for that particular occasion.[/blockquote]
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/09/0907_smithgenlee_2.html
I have always liked that story, too, Br.Mike, but, as someone who has studied the General very closely, I think it has at least a tiny whiff of apocrypha about it. I would like it to be true, and it seems like something General Lee might do in those circumstances. Perhaps it is best left as one of those stories that, while possibly not literally, factually accurate, nonetheless conveys an important truth about a man and his times.