I stared up at the giant metal structure that towered before me. A 393 foot latticed spiderwebbed monstrosity of steel beams and tubing. They called it a “hyperboloid” tower, a tower that curves inward instead of stretching outward or being straight up and down. Perched precariously at the top of this tower sat a white cylindrical room, ringed by windows, dark and ominous in the misty morning rain shower that covered the area.
My father pointed to its apex. “We’re going up there”
When he had first told me that we were going to a Civil War battlefield, this wasn’t what I had imagined. My pre-teen mind was doing jumping jacks thinking about having to go up that height. The “National Tower” was my first experience in Gettysburg, and it obviously traumatized me since I so vividly remember it at 44.
A USA Today editorial called the privately-owned tower the “ugliest commercial structure ever to intrude on the sanctity of a national park” and if you do a quick Google image search for the now absent “National Tower Gettysburg” you will probably most hardily agree.
We paid the fee and hopped in the elevator that lifted us to the top. Since I didn’t remember that the elevator had a glass wall until I saw a recent picture, I'm pretty sure I either closed my eyes or hid behind my parents as it raised us up.
We stepped out into a musty cylindrical room, which had a multi-tiered carpeted floor and floor to ceiling windows running along the outer wall. A panoramic view of the battlefield spread out before us as a tinny mettalic voices emanated from crackly speakers instructing the viewers of what was laid out just beyond the glass walls.
From that height the rolling Pennsylvania countryside stretched out in front of us. You could see the fields around the Klingle, Sherfy, Codori and Trostle farms fanning out in all directions. Below us tiny white dots traced rows and half circles on the green blanket of the National Cemetary.
My young mind didn’t grasp what I was looking at though. I saw landscape that was very similar to Berks County where we lived. The only difference was that this landscape was dotted with cannons and monuments with men carved or standing on them with lots of words and weird symbols on them. I don’t think my feelings that first visit was a unique experience for someone my age. I knew this place had an air of reverence to it the way that my parents talked about it, but I couldn’t comprehend why that was.
Since then, I’ve become a father, foster dad and Boy Scout leader. I have taken quite a few kids to Gettysburg over the years, and I can see that same experience playing out on many of them. When it came to my kids most of the time the after-action reports given to their mother, (who also feels like it’s a field with rocks in it) relayed the "fun” parts of their day. The cool observation towers, climbing the Pennsylvania monument, playing on Devils' Den, and the shops and stores downtown. I am fairly certain that if you are reading this, and you have been to Gettysburg with your own children your experiences are pretty much the same.
The epiphany came to me on a subsequent trip to the battlefield. I was a little bit older but only by a couple years. Before they built the new visitor center building that houses the museum and cyclorama, they used to be in two separate buildings off Taneytown Road. The Cyclorama building which housed the beautiful 360-degree painting of the battle, always reminded me of a giant tuna can. It was a large metal gray cylindrical building set back closer to Hancock Avenue.
In front of the Cyclorama building directly across from the National cemetery was the old Gettysburg visitor center. (where the parking lot is today). It was a large brick building with four large white columns straddling the entrance. Inside this building was the museum with its thousands of artifacts, a gift shop....
...and the electric map.
The electric map was a 30-foot by 30-foot topographic map of the battlefield. It was the rolling hills, forests and farmers' fields laid out and miniaturized. Here and there in this landscape were dime sized lightbulbs embedded in strategic locations.
The room’s lights dimmed, and John O'Gradys sage-like voice boomed from every direction. First, he oriented you to the map. Tiny white lights illuminated to show the viewer the position of the town of Gettysburg and your current location on cemetery hill. Soon he was showing you troop movements and locations. The tiny multicolored lights danced across the landscape.
Sitting in a dark room and watching these lights move around I was transfixed. I imagined tiny little soldiers moving back and forth across the landscape playing out the story in my mind. I saw the soldiers marching in columns, a great blue wave pushing against a great gray one. I saw the blue wave retreating through Gettysburg and forming the now famous fishhook on Cemetary ridge. I saw General Sickles move his men without orders from the base of Little Round top to the peach orchard mere yards from the enemy lines.
It was these stories that sparked something in me. I started to “get” the story of Gettysburg and what happened there in the hot summer sun of 1863. I soon became obsessed with it. I found books at the school and public library and dove into them. I learned the nuances, the men, the strategy and the drama. Around that time the movie “Gettysburg” came out which only reinvigorated me. Here those men of the past in those pages I read came alive across the screen.
From Gettysburg It branched out, Antietam, Manassas, Petersburg, Fredericksburg, I read them all. As I got older my interest changed a bit. I moved from the high level “This army went here and did this” to a more nuanced study in the politics of the time. I wanted to try to understand what caused brothers, cousins, neighbors and friends to pick up arms and try to kill each other.
But all of that came from an ugly old tower and a map with tiny lightbulbs on it.
