Dedication of Civil War mural set for Palm Sunday
On Palm Sunday 1865, Lee and Grant met at Appomattox, marking the end of the Civil War. This Palm Sunday, 150 years later, will mark the dedication of a mural commemorating the lives of civilians in the Pocahontas County area during that war. The mural, by local artist Molly Must, is on the Motor Parts building, just a block east of the McClintic Library on Route 39 in Marlinton. The event will take place at 2 p.m. In case of inclement weather, the ceremony will be moved to the Pocahontas County Opera House, just a couple of blocks away.
Speakers will include the artist; Kay Goodwin, WV Secretary of Education and the Arts and Chair of the WV Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission; Paul Quigley, James L Robertson Jr. Professor in Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech; and County Commission President Bill Beard. Rob Taggart will provide Civil War music, and Jason Bauserman will portray Elder John Kline, a prominent Brethren minister of the period.
Funding for the mural was provided by The West Virginia Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission, the Pocahontas County Commission, and the Pocahontas County CVB. Floyd Davis, Jr. offered the wall of his business as a home for the mural. The Civil War mural project was sponsored by the Pocahontas County Free Libraries, which also sponsored Molly Must’s “Last Forest” mural on First Avenue in Marlinton.
As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods,
To the music of rustling leaves
kick’d by my feet, (for ‘twas autumn)
I mark’d at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;
Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat
(easily all I could understand)
The halt of a midday hour, when up!
no time to lose – yet this sign left,
On a tablet scraw’d and
nail’d on the tree by the grave,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering,
Many a changeful season to follow,
and many a scene of life,
Yet at times through changeful season and scene,
abrupt, alone, or in the crowded street,
Comes before me the unknown soldier’s grave,
come the inscription rude in Virginia’s woods.
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
—Walt Whitman
The text of a poem by Walt Whitman inscribed on the mural expresses the impact of the Civil War on the country at the close of the war.
