Veterans Day He'll Tell Stories of the Fallen

When the annual Marietta Veterans Day parade rolls down Roswell Street on Nov. 11, Brad Quinlin will be in his usual spot. He’ll hear the echo of the high school bands. He might see the heads of proud vets as they march toward the square or the top of a military vehicle.

Quinlin will be a block away from the festivities at the corner of Cole Street and Washington Avenue, under the majestic arch at the entrance to the Marietta National Cemetery. It’s right where he belongs.

Quinlin is the unofficial, unpaid, unstoppable historian of this solemn place where 18,838 gravestones stand. As the parade goes by, Quinlin will tell the stories of the dead.

He has written two books about the cemetery, including “Rest Brave Comrades: Your Work is Done.” He has three tours planned on Veterans Day. The first will be in mid-morning with the United Daughters of the Confederacy. A second tour at 3 p.m. and a candlelight tour at 6:30 p.m. are free and open to the public.

In fact, if you stop by the arch almost any time before, during or after the parade you’re likely to find Quinlin—and he’ll be happy to tell you a thing or two about the cemetery.

“I was here doing research and just walking around recently when a lady came up and asked me who she needed to talk to about a burial,” Quinlin said last week while working in the cemetery with fellow researcher Phillip Whiteman.

“Her sister and brother-in-law were with her. You could see the tension. She said, ‘My son was killed three weeks ago in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb.’

“I told her I was sorry for her loss and gave her a copy of my book. She just started crying, gave me a big hug and walked away.

“Her sister came over and said, ‘You know, that’s the first time she’s been able to cry, so thank you.’”

As Quinlin told the story, tears welled up in his eyes.

He and Whiteman have a deep passion for the cemetery. Quinlin said they will begin work soon on a TV documentary about the cemetery called “Generations: Beyond the Glory.” The Military Channel will begin filming next April, Quinlin said. The documentary should air in January 2013.

“We’re both historians,” Whiteman said. “What we’re doing for the national cemetery is more out of a love because we’re not getting paid by the government to do this. 

"We do stuff with the National Park Service; we do lectures for school programs, civic groups; we’re both collaborating on a book.

“He’s already got a couple of books out now. We were both in retail work prior to this. I finally put my history degree together.

“I’m a native Atlantan. I’d been by this cemetery many times and never thought much about it, being a good Southern boy. Now I realize I’m looking at the grand picture of American history. I don’t look at it as Blue and Gray. I look at it as soldiers and sacrifice.”

There are 10,312 Civil War-era graves in the cemetery, and those are the immediate concern of these two historians. They are “fighting a time battle” in Washington as archive budgets are cut and records digitized.

Quinlin said that he and Whiteman will each document 10 trips to Washington this year, all on their own time and using their own money. They are trying to match official records with their own research in the hopes of discovering the identities of soldiers in unknown graves.

When Quinlin began this work more than 10 years ago, there were 3,048 “unknown” markers in the Marietta cemetery. Today there are 2,999.

“We’ve got this complied list of soldiers, and in our trips to Washington we’re gathering information on them, their regiments, letters that they’ve written,” Whiteman said. “Now we are going through to find out if there is a ‘known’ grave. Some of these we’re finding may be buried in Chattanooga or they may be in an unknown grave, but they are not identified.”

Identities are often discovered in letters between soldiers and their mothers.

“In 1862 the government passed the first pension act,” Quinlin said. “It was a mother and widows' pension act. For widows it was easy to prove that your husband was your financial support. But mothers had to actually show that their sons had given them money and they couldn’t live without that income."

“We’re looking specifically at mothers' pensions,” Whiteman added. “It’s part of the story that these women were so destitute that they had to prove that their son served or sent them money home. These were just farm boys. They were helping out at home and went off to war.”

The pensions were $8 a month.

“We want to get these letters before they are locked away,” Whiteman said, “to find out what these guys were writing home about.

“What we’re trying to do is produce some books that will have these letters, so they’re out there to the public. They can read these guys' stories, so they’re not forgotten. I think that’s the main thing. You drive by and you look at stones—OK. But when you find out these guys had homes, families and you read what they were thinking about, it’s pretty interesting.”

On Dec. 1, Quinlin and Whiteman will do a special holiday program at for the recently formed group. Dressed in period costumes, they will read “Christmas letters from the front,” along with women playing the roles of mothers.

“We both love history,” Quinlin said. “It just drives us.

“Something I read a year or so ago: To die for your country is not the worst thing. To die for your country and be buried in an unknown grave is not the worst thing. To die for your country and be forgotten, that’s the worst thing.”