A Real Preservation Character: Robert Lee Hodge-- Part 1

From the Fall 2012 Preservation Magazine "A Preservation Battle Cry" by Gwendolyn Purdom.

With first two names like his, you had to know which side he would be on. Call him the Ultimate Rebel or Secesh (Hey, that's my name), if you prefer.

Those stories his mother read him from the Golden Book of the Civil War as a youngster got him hooked. (I got hooked on Fort Fisher and especially liked the American Heritage book showing all the little soldiers moving across the battlefield.

Today, Robert Lee Hodge is not only a dedicated re-enactor, Rebel, of course, but on occasion even Yankee. But also a historian, filmmaker and preservationist. He is also an 11-year member of the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust's Board of Directors.

He says that when he moved to Virginia in 1991, he was shocked to see all the old battlefields being overrun by development.

And, there was a lot about him in Tony Horwitz's book "Confederates In the Attic."

--Old Secesh