Monument Monday August 20, 2018

[James N.]

... Wilson created a series of similar statues called the "Silent Sentinels." All were created in the North and then displayed in the South. Like these other statues, Silent Sam is positioned to face north towards the Union.

Of course this was necessary and nothing political - all the foundries were in the North, as were most of the sculptors; two notable exceptions were Richmond's Confederate veteran William L. Shepherd who sculpted the Confederate Monument in Arlington National Cemetery and former VMI Cadet Moses Ezekiel whose statues Virginia Mourning Her Dead and Stonewall Jackson grace the campus there.

 

[JAGwinn]

BLOOMINGTON — Crumbling concrete bases forced the temporary removal Thursday of four Civil War-era cannons that have stood as memorials for veterans for 102 years in Miller Park.

The cannons were mounted in March 1916 on concrete bases near the McLean County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in the northeast corner of Miller Park. They had been removed five months earlier from Franklin Park, where the military monument previously stood.

The cannons were dedicated in 1939 to members of the Grand Army of the Republic.

City parks and recreation workers already at Miller Park to work on the new firefighters' memorial nearby helped remove the cannons for members of American Legion posts 635 in Normal and 56 in Bloomington.

The city workers hauled the cannons to a city facility where they will be stored until the bases can be replaced.

"Little things that we can do like this to help memorialize our veterans, we take pride in, and it is an honor for our whole department," said Jay Tetzloff, director of the Bloomington Parks, Recreation and Cultural Arts Department and Miller Park Zoo.

"The stands were getting deteriorated and we thought they were going to fall apart, and the cannons would fall on the ground," said Clayton James, a city parks and recreation employee and color guard field commander for Post 635.

So he talked to Bloomington Parks Superintendent Bobby Moews about doing something with the cannons.

James is among members of the two Legion posts looking into what to do with the cannons after their removal from the mounts. They are exploring whether to purchase ready-made mounts or use the local trades workers to build the mounts in Bloomington, said James.

Private funding and a time frame for the work still are being worked out.

The cannons will be brought back to the park after the mounts are ready. The cannons also will be powder coated "so they will look more like a cannon than a scratch pad because they've been there for more than 90 years," said James.

The cannons are an important, if somewhat mysterious, local link to the Civil War, said James.

Bloomington (IL) Pantagraph, Wednesday, August 22, 2018