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April 17, 2023 Editor, The News-Gazette: Last week’s issue reported this sad front page heading: “W&L Wall Reimagined.” Translation: W&L finally decided what to do with Edward Virginias Valentine’s Recumbent Statue of Robert Edward Lee — it will hide history behind a wall. And here I thought we learned something about walls and history. From The Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall, they have all ultimately failed.
As to Valentine’s work of art, it deals with peace and reflection, not war and slavery. Lee is simply caught doing what every tired soldier does when he has the opportunity for a little shuteye on a battlefield. This former Army private is okay with a general taking a nap, even on a hard marble slab. Now he will sleep inside a building to be known as the Annex, allowing the chapel to remain registered as a National Historic Landmark. How cleaver!
However, W&L’s problem is not only deception or how to blow a $2 billion endowment, one not subject to local taxes. It is much bigger and is what’s plaguing most colleges and universities today. They believe they know all the answers when the focus of all learning is to be able to ask the right questions. When we stop asking questions we lose the ability to learn. Today colleges stress answers, even which buildings should have their names changed. And when there are no answers we search into our back pockets. Sorry, our smartphones are not that smart.
Here’s a suggestion: Have W&L teach greatness, tell its students that there were great men and women who came before. Teach them what made them great and you will have W&L students aspire to greatness.
Allow me to close on a personal note. I own a plot in a country church cemetery. When I finally go there to rest should I ask that a wall be built around the Confederate soldiers buried there? Maybe I could tap into W&L’s endowment. DAVID REYNOLDS Rockbridge County
