I was working with a guy a few years ago (I wish I could remember his name) who was getting together a list of Confederate dead interred in Hollywood Cemetery. I have a pretty comprehensive database of Arkansas and Louisiana soldiers, and I provided him with full name, rank, regiment, and date of death for our boys known to be buried there.

I was at the Pentagon for three years back in the early 1970s, and I traveled around to nearby battlefields on weekends -- Manassas, Fredericksburg, Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, etc. I'm sure they've changed a lot in the last 30 years, though. My favorite spot in all of Virginia was Lexington. Not only is the Valley one of the prettiest spots on earth, but I loved to just stand there on the parade ground at Virginia Military Institute and gaze up at the mountains and think to myself, "Stonewall Jackson walked the very ground on which I'm standing!" If I wasn't an Arkansas homeboy, I could very easily have talked myself into retiring at Lexington instead of coming back to Arkansas. What an awesome place it is.