"Tell Them All About It, Won't You?"
Images of the Present, Voices of the Past
Gettysburg
Helen S. Schwartz
Katharine A. Sloan
Written by Reporter, Kate Fratti for the Bucks County Courier Times
"Do the spirits of the dead cling to battlefields long after the war is done? Does their energy linger in the bloodied ground and marred trees and stay even when the earth heals the scars with new growth?"
Helen Schwartz thinks so. Her new book (a compilation of her photographs of Gettysburg paired with interpretive writings by friend Katharine A. Sloan) is rooted in the belief.
"Tell Them All About It, Won't You? Images of the Present, Voices of the Past" is haunting in its beauty, simplicity and connection to the past. It uses for its title a Civil War soldier's dying request of Maj. Abner R. Small. The words speak to Helen's sense of mission.
Small was quoted in this published account:
"One poor fellow, about 25 years of age, was shot through the body. His wants were few. "Only a drink of water. I am so cold, so cold. Won't you cover me up?' And then his mind wandered, murmuring something about, "Dear Mother. So glad 'tis all over'... and would I write to his father and tell him how he died; how he loved them at home. "Tell them all about it, won't you? ... I covered his face ... he was some mother's darling."
Helen's photo of the North Carolina monument, the sun glinting on a line of bronze soldiers, accompanies the text."
This book is intended to move you visually and emotionally.
We hope that the reader will enjoy our book and want to visit and to learn more about and help to preserve Gettysburg NMP Battlefield and other Battlefields, National Parks and Historical Sites throughout our Country so that future generations will be able to learn about American History by walking it as we do.
"...we hope we'll help to fulfill Will Jenkins' dying request of Abner Small; that we can, in some small way, 'Tell them all about it."