By Raquel DeSouza
Springfield resident and self-employed contractor Vernon Gardener has been in the Union 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Company since 2011. As a history buff and former professional actor, he enjoys participating in the Civil War re-enactments with his fellow soldiers.
He tells us about being a Southerner and performing as a Union soldier and what it takes to accurately portray 19th-century military action. Gardener and his company will be at Sully Historic Site for the Civil War encampment weekend.
Is your family from Northern Virginia?
My family has been in the state of Virginia as far back probably to colonial times. That’s one of the funny things we joke about; obviously you can tell I have a bit of a Southern accent, and my ancestors [would] probably roll over in their graves if they knew I was wearing a Union uniform. They came from way, way down [in] southern Virginia, almost to the North Carolina border, and they were all Virginians, and of course Virginia was a Confederate state.
Why did you want to join the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Company?
A friend of mine has been a Civil War re-enactor since 1996. He and I are fellow Elks, and [he] has been doing it forever and a day. He invited me to come out for a weekend, and they suited me up because I had nothing—I didn’t have the musket or anything—but all of the unit put it together. They took me out and put me through the drills. Of course I got all the lowly jobs.
Tell me about your upcoming performance at Sully.
This will be our second time out there. We absolutely fell in love with it. It’s a small living history weekend, and it has skirmishes. One of the beautiful things about it is the majority of our camp is in shaded trees. We get a big turnout, and we get a lot of people that actually come out through the camps, and that’s when we demonstrate the muskets and drill work, the food that we ate, the tents. It’s the 1860s life that we portray. This coming weekend we’ll have 19-20 individuals in our unit.
Do you consider yourself a history buff?
Yes, that was my best subject in school, and what’s really funny about this [is] back 20 years ago I knew people who were actually in Civil War re-enacting, but I was raising a family at the time. I had my own business,and I just didn’t have the time. As a matter of fact, I had never been to a Civil War reenactment until the very one that I went out and participated in.
What’s the most challenging part about doing these performances?
The most challenging part is the maneuvers, when we’re getting into position to go out into the battlefields to meet the Confederate armies. We have long marches, [and] most of these events happen in July and August. Sometimes we have to get into columns and march a mile or more. By the end of the day with all of the maneuvers and everything, you feel like you’ve played three football games. It’s a very physical hobby, very demanding. But during those times we’re in the field, we’re supplied with bags of ice and put them in the tops of hats and stick them in our jackets and put them in our pockets.
What’s your favorite part about participating in these events?
I think my favorite part at the end of the day is the camaraderie around the campfire at night; that’s the best part of the whole event. We get together, we get back to our tents and dinners, and we have people who play music, and there’s singalongs. You know, it’s almost like adult Boy Scouts to a certain degree.
Civil War Encampment Weekend
Sully Historic Site
Aug. 15, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Aug. 16, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
