Letting the lights shine

Southern Living, Dec 1999 by Thomas, Les

If you come to the Antietam Illumination, December 4 (rain date December 11), arrive early enough to see the battlefield in the daytime.

Most visitors are amazed at the beauty of the countryside. On a Saturday morning, light glows golden over the rolling hills outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, where the battle was fought on farms tended by German pacifists known as Dunkers.

"If you take the power lines down, you're seeing what it looked like in 1862," says John Howard, superintendent of Antietam National Battlefield. More than 120,000 Confederate and Union soldiers clashed here in America's bloodiest one-day battle.

This morning, a different kind of army is massed around the visitors center. Among them are office workers, teenagers, Cub Scouts, and college professors. They're getting ready to spread out over the battlefield to spend the day setting out 23, 110 candles that they will light tonight in remembrance of each casualty of the battle. (See "Illuminating Antietam" on page 80.)

"We have 1,011 volunteers today, and we had to turn away about 500 people because we had so many who wanted to help," says Georgene Charles, chairwoman and founder of the event that's sponsored by the Little Heiskell Charter Chapter of the American Business Women's Association and the National Park Service.

Retired Col. Roy Horton and his wife, Elsie, from Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, have been volunteers for six years. "When we drove through the first time we were so impressed by the magnitude, we wanted to be a part," says Roy.

"I like to say it's returning something to the past," adds teacher Jim Percoco, who brought 27 students and their parents from Springfield, Virginia, to help.

Lee Ann Graff, a high school senior from Fairplay, Maryland, has been a volunteer since the Illumination was started. "The first year it snowed," she recalls. "My brother pulled me around on a sled. I just remember him telling me when to drop the candles. "

Volunteers use ropes to set the candles out in grids along a 4 1/2mile road through the battlefield.

"Soldiers described Antietam as the day the sky turned red from artillery fire," John says as he looks out over the stubble of a cornfield where some of the heaviest fighting took place. "This field changed hands 26 times that we know of," he says. "There were about 6,000 casualties here in an hour and a half."

At night, when he watches the lights flicker far into the distance, John says he often thinks of how many young lives ended here on that fateful day. "The majority were just boys. Average age was 19, They were men after this day-if they lived through it." Les Thomas

LIGHTING THE WAY

Antietam National Battlefield:

Box 158, Sharpsburg, MD 21782; (301) 432-5124. Web site: antietam.org. Hours: The drive is open 6 p.m.midnight. Admission: free but donations are welcome. Directions: Sharpsburg is a two-hour drive from Baltimore or Washington, D.C.; from 1-70, take Route 34 south to the battlefield entrance. Lodging: Bed-andbreakfast inns around Sharpsburg include the Piper House, a farmhouse on the battlefield that briefly served as Maj. Gen. James Longstreet's headquarters. Rates are $85 weekdays, $95 weekends; (301) 797-1862.