Here's Hoping Bedford, Va. Doesn''t Participate in the Great Virginia Confederate Monument Orgy July 1

Bedford, Virginia, home of the National D-Day Memorial  because of its loss of 19 men that day out of 34 engaged and they have a wonderful memorial to them.  I have been writing about this town's sacrifice the last several days.

However, Bedford and Bedford County also has a monument honoring its Confederates who fought during the Civil War.  There is a lot of  news of hate crimes being directed against other Confederate monuments in the state these days, especially in Richmond, and I am wondering about the fate of the Confederate one Bedford.

Will it be allowed to remain or have to be defaced and taken down because of offense to some?

Here's hoping the town continues to honor its war dead and service they gave, regardless of whether or not they were Confederate.

Maybe one Virginia town is not going with the current wave of hate.

--GreGen

Bedford, Va. Remembers D-Day-- Part 4: "Where Are My Boys?"

Several weeks after D-Day, a package arrived at the Hoback's home.  It contained Raymond's Bible.  Lucille now treasures it.  For decades it sat prominently in the family room, never to be moved.  It is inscribed "Raymond S. Hoback, from mother, Xmas, 1938."

Her parents never got over their loss.  She remembers her mother, in her dying days, waking from nightmares screaming, "Where are my boys?"

April Cheek-Messier, a local resident who is president of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, says the sadness that lingered in town for many years has been replaced by "immense patriotism."

On the 75th anniversary, Lucille Hoback Boggess still feels the loss:  "You wonder what they would have done with their lives, how Bedford would be different if all those boys had come hone," she says.  "You never forget.  I miss them every day."

GreGen