Cold And Wind Disrupt Civil War Commemoration

Biting wind and 18-degree temperatures disrupted Baltimore’s first observance yesterday of the Civil War centennial.

Several hundred persons had been expected to take part in the ceremony. Eight showed up.

The frozen contingent, fortified by steaming coffee, marched in front of the Baltimore Museum of Art to the Lee-Jackson statue at Wyman Park drive.

Photographers There

While the men in uniform stamped their feet in the snow to keep warm, the brief ceremony went on before three television and newspaper photographers and two women with movie cameras.

The Rev. Robert Schenkel, assistant rector of Christ Episcopal Church, offered a prayer.

Then, Edward Turner, chairman of the Civil War Centennial Committee of Baltimore, honored “the two men cast in bronze” and “all the men from Maryland who fought under the two great generals” – Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonathan (Stonewall) Jackson.

Harold Klein, of the Sharpsburg Rifles, joined Henry Klapp, of the 2d Maryland Battery of the Confederate States of America, to place a laurel wreath at the foot of the double equestrian statue.

This closed the first part of the program.

Then Comes Second Part

Mr. Turner and Mr. Klein, both in Union uniforms, marched away with the six members of the 2d Maryland Battery to the second equally cold scene of the afternoon’s ceremony-the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on the southeast corner of Wyman Park drive and North Charles street.

There the exercises were repeated, this time to honor the Union side of the war.

“I had a wonderful plan, but it went awry,” Mr. Turner said. He recalled vividly last Sunday when the program first was scheduled. It rained.