VMI Visit - Megan Philips

I really enjoyed visiting VMI and learning a little bit about their history through there monuments. I had never been on their campus before. VMI has a wide range of memorial types woven into its grounds. First, we saw the painting of the Battle of Newmarket in the Jackson Memorial Hall. This depicts the battle in which VMI cadets stepped up to serve as a crucial part of the battle, ultimately helping the Confederate army win. At many of the memorials, Col. Gibbons addressed how perception is important when dealing with controversial topics like this that show how Confederate history is abundant at VMI. We discussed how some may look at the painting as a celebration of the Confederate south, while others look at it in its historical importance to the campus.

Next we saw the memorial gardens – a living memorial space that also incorporates traditional monuments. The grassy memorial seemed to get a lot of traffic as students went about their daily schedules. As seen below, the traditional monuments that are located in the garden are a sculpture of the man that represents the ideals VMI has for their cadets and the commemorative archway that serves to thank everyone in the community for their service to the institute. I thought it was interesting that this archway was only about a year old in contrast to the man who was originally commissioned by Mussolini. This juxtaposition indicates that VMI’s memorial landscape is continuing to change and still plays an important role on the campus.

               The Jonathan Daniels memorial, a bas relief, provided another form of memorial. Here we learned that VMI commemorates many different aspects of its community, and Daniels’ story about selflessness was one of the most moving that we heard. I also thought it was really impressive that the cadets all seemed to know the history of this memorial well. This shows how VMI’s history plays an integral role in attending the institution, and I think that W&L could benefit by following in these footsteps regarding our own history.

One of the last memorials we looked at was the statue of Stonewall Jackson in front of the barracks. His pose in the Confederate uniform once again started the conversation about the perception of the memorial. As Col. Gibbons said, the viewer must remember that the war is what gave him the national recognition that many people know as well as the importance of staying loyal to Virginia in VMI’s history. This could have influenced the decision to make portray him as a military man rather than a professor at the school.