The Greene County Board of Supervisors recently gave final approval for a new item to be placed on the Greene County Courthouse grounds in Jefferson.

At their most recent meeting, the Board approved the plans and designs for the Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey monument. According to the committee, the Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey included 32 students and teachers from the Old Rippey School that enlisted and fought in the Civil War. What started as a story in a Greene County High School history class last year, has now transformed into an initiative.

The committee now has approval to install two monuments, one at the courthouse grounds and one at the Old Rippey Cemetery, along with purchasing authentic Civil War uniforms that high school students will wear and marching in various local parades, and there will be a play in the fall, further telling the story. 

High school senior Lila Osterson was one of the artists that were involved in the design of the monument. She explains how she created the front of the monument that depicts a soldier.

“We have a few pictures of the Rippey Schoolboy Soldiers and so I kind of pulled from that. As for the way he’s posed, in the picture, a lot of that is how our monument is shaped, he needs to be kind of tall and upright. And a lot of it is how I would fear they would feel, and so I kind of tried to reflect that emotion into how he’s standing and his facial expression.”   

Fellow high school senior Aden Bardole was recruited early on for designs of the monument and being from the Rippey area, he describes how he gravitated towards this project after initially learning about it.

“ When Chuck Offenburger came in it was definitely surprising, I didn’t know anything about it. And there was something personal to it, just being where my family’s from, that area, where the school house was. I mean, I love history and I love learning about it. And so, just kind of hearing the stories and hearing all the ways that the different soldiers got there and all that stuff, I think is really cool.”   

Offenburger, the chair of the committee, mentioned at the Supervisors meeting that the first reveal of the Civil War uniforms that will be worn by the students will be on Memorial Day at 10am during the Memorial Day service at the Old Rippey Cemetery and the dedication of the monument in Jefferson will be in mid-October.