* * When Bud talks, everybody listens

“Bud” was in town the other evening, Roanoke actually. Bud is the nickname of James I. Robertson, Jr., the famed and beloved Civil War historian who for almost 45 years taught tens of thousands of Virginia Tech students about the War. He retired a few years ago as Alumni Distinguished Professor of History and moved with his second wife, Betty, to the Northern Neck.

I took his class, yes, 40 years ago! He was quite the rock-star even in those days, regaling 300 or more students in a large auditorium three times each week for two quarters (Yes, Tech was on the quarter rather than the semester system back then.) with tales of triumph and mostly tragedy.

I got to know him on a more personal level years later when he helped me as I wrote my first book, The Spine of the Virginias, about that odd sibling relationship between Virginia and West Virginia. I knew West Virginia was carved from Virginia during the War, but I didn’t know the details. When we discussed it, he admitted he didn’t know the details either, but his friend Stuart McGehee, a professor of history in Bluefield, was an expert. While scratching out contact information for me, I asked Bud to accompany me to call on Stuart. On our way to and from Bluefield, our acquaintance blossomed.

Stuart welcomed us with open arms, and I realized later he was the essential interview for my book. Always the contrarian, he developed an alternative story of West Virginia’s formation than had been proffered by historians before him, a story of underhanded and ruthless dealings by a band of railroad lawyers working for the B&O (Baltimore and Ohio) Railroad to petition Congress to establish a new state.

But I digress.

Bud was the featured speaker at a fund-raising event for the Center in the Square at the Hotel Roanoke. Leslie Roberts Gregg, my artist friend who collaborated with me recently on my latest book, is also friends with Bud after having painted his portrait. So the two of us, accompanied by our spouses, attended the event. With Bud as a headliner, it was the largest event the Center had ever hosted.

If you’ve never attended a Bud Robertson speech, you owe it to yourself. You’re likely familiar with his voice, as he recorded dozens of Civil War stories that aired for years on WVTF, the NPR station in Roanoke. He has a distinctive voice, with a mild “r”-weak speech impediment and a Southside Virginia drawl. When Bud talks, everybody listens.

Bud’s Civil War has always been less about battle lines, maneuvers, military tactics, and weaponry and more about everyday lives of soldiers, women and children back home, slaves, and even animals. He brings the War to a personal, intimate level, making the horror much more real.

He discussed how the legends, tales, and mythology of the War have evolved over time. Acknowledging that the nation was formed in the 1770s and 1780s, he claimed it was re-formed into the federal system we are familiar with today by the War. So many innovations we take for granted today were birthed in the Civil War. For example, the clothing factories of the North, at the onset of the war, made a single size of uniform, fitting just about nobody. The quartermaster ordered that uniforms be made in four sizes, labeled “small,” “medium,” “large,” and “extra-large,” and so it is today. Mail delivery was the only personal communication in those days, and often news from the front back to wives and sweethearts back home was bad. Too many women were seen weeping hysterically on post office steps, after opening mail with the worst possible news. So the Post Office instituted home delivery.

Dr. Robertson warned that that for our democracy to survive, compromise was essential. He decried the current state of polarization in government, strong in his conviction that the death of compromise would mean the death of the republic.

He spoke effusively about Robert E. Lee, explaining the General’s decision to defend the Confederacy rather than joining the Union effort. Lee descended from a Virginia First Family, and his state was 250 years old when the War began, whereas the United States was only 75. Lee’s first allegiance was to Virginia. Bud decried those who would besmirch Lee’s legacy, as immediately after surrender, Lee worked tirelessly to bind the nation back together.

Bud’s greatest admonition was about the current state of historic incompetency in today’s youth. “History is our best teacher,” for what is to come in the future, he claimed. A country that forgets its past compromises its future, and our youth are painfully ignorant.

My degree was in Engineering and Bud’s class was an elective. But I remember it as if it was yesterday. Conversely, ask me what I remember about Thermodynamics.