Several Greene County High School students spent Wednesday afternoon at Kelso Park learning what it was like to be a soldier during the Civil War.

The students were led by OJ Fargo and David Burkett, who are professional Civil War re-enactors, and they learned about parade and field marching, as well as trying on the clothing the soldiers wore and even firing blanks from muskets. One of the participants was Oliver Harris, who graduated from Greene County High School last year and is currently in his freshman year at Iowa State University studying computer engineering. 

While in high school, Harris first learned about the story of the individuals from Rippey who decided to leave school and join the Civil War from Chuck Offenburger and he became an instant leader to see that this group of guys get honored for what they did.

“This is quite an important story for our community and also it’s just an incredible story of courage and bravery that these men did for our country. I don’t know, just like kind of was shocked that there wasn’t a memorial, and I think there really should be and there ought to be. So I guess I just kind of started with that and I mean it’s just really important to not forget the sacrifice these men gave.” 

Current high school senior Lila Osterson was drafted by Iowa History Teacher Dena Boyd to draw the formation of the soldier that will be on the nine-foot tall monument, with one to be installed on the southeast corner of the Greene County Courthouse grounds and another one to be placed in the Old Rippey Cemetery. She talked about the challenges of coming up with the final design that will be 3-D etched into stone from Jefferson Monument Works.

“I think it was absolutely difficult. I’ve never drawn something fully with pencil and that’s this is, it’s just pencil on a normal piece of paper. And, it started off with shifting different poses and what he was doing, just rough sketches. And then as I was starting to build like the real thing, it was hard and I didn’t know what I was doing at first, I just kept like messing around with it, and then it all kind of fell into place.”    

The committee, which also includes representatives with the Greene County Historical Society, also received a Grow Greene County Gaming Corporation Grant for $45,000 for their project. The committee is also working on having high school students appear in parades in Civil War-era uniforms, as well as having a play commissioned by an Iowa playwright.