Met My Good Buddy Bob at the Hainesville Civil War Re-enactment: His Ed Bearss Story

Since the event advertised Elijah Haines, founder of Hainesville as being there, I figured that my good buddy and long time teacher friend, Bob, was there portraying him.  He was.

Sadly, almost the only time I get to see Bob these days is at this event.  We taught together at Magee Middle School in Round Lake, Illinois, for  31 years.  I usually taught 7th grade social studies and he 8th grade social studies.  He just turned 75 and has been retired 15 years.   Much of his time now is spent in theater.  Until this year he was the king at the famous Renaissance Faire on the Illinois/Wisconsin border.

He still belongs to The Civil War Round Table as the Chicago Civil War Round Table calls itself, but rarely attends meetings any more because they are at O'Hare and you have to drive your car.  He used to take the train downtown to Chicago before they moved meetings to O'Hare.

I told him about the McHenry County Civil War Round Table which I belong to and he says he might just get out to a meeting.

However, he has gone a lot of the Chicago Round table's Battlefield Tours and quite often Ed Bearss has been tour director.  A favorite story of Bob's is one time they were at a battlefield and it started raining and continued to get harder until everyone had retreated to cover, but there stood Ed out talking and pointing and gesturing with his arms, completely oblivious that he was the only one out there.

However, he soon had a new audience.  There was a cow pasture there and pretty soon, the cows all had meandered over to the fence and paying rapt attention to Ed.

Good Story.  --Old Secesh