Living in Loudoun County, Virginia, one is constantly surrounded by reminders, large and small, of the Civil War. Several years ago I happened across an article in a small local newspaper, the Middleburg "Eccentric," about a tiny abandoned cemetery in Loudoun County. The article described the cemetery as next to the site of an African-American house of worship, no longer standing, called Mount Sinai Church. According to the article, in that cemetery was the gravesite of a Civil War veteran, his grave marker lying flat on the ground.

The site mentioned by the newspaper was at the intersection of Mountain Road with Britain Road in rural northwestern Loudoun. To find it, one must leave behind the frenetic towns and highways of our modern world and return to a simpler, slower rural past. The chapel, built sometime after the Civil War, had long ago crumbled to dust, its place marked now only by a few foundation stones. The cemetery site had been cleared of brush, apparently by the local landowner. There were perhaps a dozen or so grave markers still readable. The grave marker I sought proved to be a standard Civil-War-era gravestone issued by the US War Department to the surviving families of veterans, without cost to them, in the years following the war. The stone identified the veteran buried there as Samuel B Timbers, Private of Company H of the 29th US Colored Infantry. And yes, the stone was indeed lying flat on the surface, along a hedgerow marking the boundary of the old churchyard.

As a member of the Lincoln-Cushing Camp of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, I marked Timbers' gravesite with a small US flag each year at Memorial Day. One day I happened to mention the issue with Timbers' grave marker to a personal friend. Ken Fleming is well-known in Loudoun County for his work in cemeteries, and in particular veterans' gravesites. Ken is also quite active in the Clinton Hatcher Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, so I did not expect him to take much interest in the gravesite of a Union soldier, black or white. Besides, neither of us then knew if Samuel Timbers had living relatives or where they might be.

Imagine my astonishment then, when I ran into Ken at a later event, and he told me that, starting from Raleigh Boaze's research and discovery of a local Timbers relative, Ken himself had obtained permission from the landowner, marked out Timbers' gravesite, and reset that pesky grave marker! Ken told me that he believes all military veterans' gravesites should receive honorable treatment, without regard to "what war" or "which side."

I believe that Ken Fleming's unselfish act of kindness clearly demonstrates the values we as Americans should hold, and the attitudes we ought to express toward one another, without regard to "North" or "South," "black" or "white," creed or political beliefs. Especially during this time of political stress, it seems to me we would do well to follow Ken's example.