| Occasionally, certain individuals I enter
into Family Forests are particularly memorable
because they trigger a vivid personal memory, and
because they also add value to that memory. Early
this morning, Colonel John Thomas Lewis Preston
became one of those individuals.
In January 1995 we spent a few days in
Lexington, VA attending the funeral of one of
Kristine's friends. It was a solemn and
reflective time, and a couple of things made
memorable impressions.
Second in impressiveness only to the genuine
warmth and gracious Southern hospitality of its
people is the sense of heritage and history that
permeates Lexington. The Virginia Military
Institute, or V.M.I., is a large part of
Lexington's heritage and history. It was founded
in 1839 by Colonel John Thomas Lewis Preston, who
in April 1861 marched with the corps of cadets
for Richmond.
As I entered information about the Colonel and
his relatives from the surrounding area, I
lingered on thoughts of cadets marching off to
war from Lexington, and of my memories of being
there one winter almost a century and a half
later.
But what I find amazingly coincidental, and
the catalyst for this log entry, was what
happened just a couple of hours later. Here on an
island in the middle of the Pacific, a half a
world away from Lexington, VA, in a conversation
with some new friends, they mentioned that they
are about to go visit the Virginia Military
Institute for an alumni event.
What a surprising and interconnected world we
live in!
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