The Bayard Wilkeson Project
Honoring Oregon’s Fallen Soldiers
(left to right: Acacia Ricks, Lauren Lonas, Alyssa Etheridge)
With the instituting of an "Extended Learning Time” in the middle of the school day, South Middle School has offered their students the opportunity to learn more about American History. In an ELT early in the fall on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the students learned one of the stories behind the great speech.
Bayard Wilkeson was an artillery officer in the Civil War that died on the first day of Gettysburg. His bravery and courage was displayed hours before his death when he amputated his own leg in efforts to save his own life. His father, a war correspondent for the NY Times, was also at the battle of Gettysburg and found his son on July 4th, 1863, the day after the end of the battle. In his editorial the father wrote:
“Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendently absorbing interest—the dead body of an oldest born…My pen is heavy. Oh, you dead, who at Gettysburgh have baptised with your blood the second birth of Freedom in America, how you are to be envied!”
Just over four months later, standing on a hill not far from where young Bayard Wilkeson had died, Abraham Lincoln invoked a similar sentiment:
“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”
Being moved by the unimaginable pain of a son’s death and inspired by Lincoln’s words, three young women, Alyssa Etheridge, Lauren Lonas and Acacia Ricks created the Bayard Wilkeson project. In memory of “These Honor Dead”, these girls have worked every day since the end of October creating an interactive map and website of all the 142 soldiers from Oregon that have died in Afghanistan and Iraq so that we know that they “shall not have died in vain.” The project got very personal when the girls discovered that one of our own young men, Juan Manuel Garcia-Schill who attended North Middle School, died as the result of a roadside bomb in Taqaddum, Iraq in 2007. Juan earned his black belt in Tae Kwon Do and played football for the Cavemen. From his eighth grade to tenth grade years, he volunteered in an after-school program in which he taught children Spanish and how to play soccer. The toughest day of the project was when the number of fallen rose from 141 to 142. During the week of President’s Day the girls learned of the death of John Pelham, a twenty-two year old young man from Portland. He had been the quarterback of his high school football team and declined a college baseball scholarship to enlist. Wendall Pelham, John’s father said, “My son was a warrior and he knew part of his calling in life was to defend the freedoms of our country. He was a wonderful human being with a special heart. To lose one of your own child, I never thought it would be mine.”
The website the girls have created will be going live in a few weeks with an interactive map. On the map the girls have a picture of the fallen Oregonian, a brief biography, and hyperlink to each soldier’s obituary. They hope to present their “gift of honor” to not only different service groups in the Grants Pass, but to the parents of Oregon’s fallen. In a few weeks, you can also learn of some of our Oregonians greatest sacrifice to our country at bayardwilkesonproject.org.