Greetings from Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

In 1985, we took our three boys – Graham, age 13 and twins Mark and George, 9 – on a trip around the western U.S. One highlight was a visit to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, where our boys sat in rapt admiration and attention as a park ranger no taller than them deftly set the scene, described the Seventh Cavalry’s advance, and posed some of the multitude of mysteries about Custer’s “last stand” that will never be solved. His account, although factual, was stirring, and when he described the soldiers lying lonely and dead after the Sioux had ridden away, Mark dabbed at a tear. The battlefield was poignant and beautiful, and leads visitors to accost the probability that Custer – who was vain, brash, and arrogant, and who had ambitions for the Presidency – probably won more lasting fame as the result of a deadly blunder than he might have obtained as a politician. (I wish I had recorded the ranger’s name. Although short in stature, he had a big personality that our family has never forgotten.)

Sincerely,
Hugh