Old Baldy Receives the CWRT Congress 2022 Wally Rueckel Innovation Award

The Wallace L. Rueckel Innovation Award celebrates the CWRT that has successfully sought to improve their organization in a variety of ways. The award for 2022 was presented in this video.

SAVE THE DATE. Mark Saturday, May 14, 2022, with a bold red circle as we are going to celebrate not only Old Baldy’s 170th birthday but also the 45th Anniversary of our Round Table. Join us in celebrating these two extraordinary events. Round Table members, family and friends are all invited over to hosts Paul and Susan Prentiss’s home located in Marlton, NJ.

We will be out in the back yard, sitting in lawn chairs to maintain social distancing. The dining fare will be similar to last year but with improvements. We will have hamburgers, hot dogs, salads, sheet cake, chips, cheese & crackers plate, and whatever you want to bring.

The initial Picnic Planning email will be sent in early April. Send your ideas to Paul at to make this momentous event a smashing success.

Join Old Baldy Civil War Roundtable at Historic Soldiers Weekend, Saturday, September 26, 2020, 9am–5pm. This year’s event is held at the Air Victory Museum in Lumberton, NJ. Members are invited to donate an hour of your time to help share information at our display table.

Ticket sales: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3630769

Registration form is now available: Civil War Navy conference form

A message from John C. Fazio:

Fellow Roundtablers and History Lovers:

This year, as with the last two, I will again be teaching an overview of the Civil War at Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York (Causes, Combat, Conclusions and Consequences). The course number is 1420, a description of which you can access on-line by Googling “Chautauqua Institution”, then “2018 Season”, then “Take a Class”, then “Register for Classes”, then “Go to Course Number 1420”. The course consists of three two-hour lectures, complete with hundreds of PowerPoint slides, from 1:00 through 3:00 pm, on August 20, 21 and 22, at the Turner Conference Center. Tuition is quite modest–$85 for the entire course, with a daily rate if one wishes to attend only one or two of the lectures.

Incidentally, it happens, quite by chance and quite fortuitously, that Ken Burns will be speaking on two of the days that I will be lecturing. His program is titled “The Filmmaker as Collaborator: A Conversation With Ken Burns and Friends. His “Friends” are Dayton Duncan, a documentary filmmaker and author, and Geoffrey C. Ward, a scriptwriter and author. Burns’s program will be given on August 20 and 21 at 10:45 am, so one could easily schedule both his program and the Civil War lectures on both days. Burns hardly needs an introduction. He is the creator of numerous made-for-TV historical masterpieces, one of which, of course, is “The Civil War”, which George Will said was the best thing ever to be shown on television.

You can register at three different places on the grounds or, in advance, by using this address: http://chq.org/classes, which will take you to the registration information.

I hope to see some of you there. If you do come, please identify yourself to me.

If you have any questions, you can contact me by email () or by phone at 330-576-6061 (home) or 440-463-2957 (cell).

Thank you.

John C. Fazio

Bob Russo on “Arlington National Cemetery—Garden of Stone”

Bob is presenting for our Community Outreach initiative: 10:30 am, July 2, 2018, at the Katz JCC Community Center, Cherry Hill, NJ. The JCC charges a $5 donation to cover refreshments.

Over many years Bob Russo made numerous trips to Arlington National Cemetery to better understand the history and sites of this National treasure, hallowed ground and final resting place of over 400,000 veterans and their family members. Bob’s presentation, Arlington National Cemetery—Garden of Stone, is the result of much of that work.

To stand at Arlington National Cemetery today it’s easy to look at the rows of tombstones, set in perfect alignment, and view the rolling hills as a Garden of Stone. What you see today involves years of evolution that started long before the Civil War. In fact the narrative of the ground at Arlington goes back to the time of the American Revolution when George Washington’s adopted son purchased the ground where the National Cemetery sits today. Year’s later Robert E. Lee resided here. The guards at today’s Tomb of the Unknowns tie directly to George Washington and his Continental Army. That connection can be seen at Valley Forge National Historical Park. These associations to the past convey an interesting story that spans over 235 years.

Many stones symbolize the story of an American hero, someone who served our Nation either in the military or some other capacity. Beyond the graves are numerous monuments that tell a tale of American courage, some from America’s most heart wrenching and iconic moments. Three of the Marines who raised the flag at Iwo Jima are buried here, President Kennedy, his brothers, two Apollo 1 astronauts, Joe Louis, Audie Murphy and many other well known Americans. Memorials to the Shuttle Challenger Astronauts, the Confederate Monument, the Memorial Amphitheatre, the Nurses Memorial, war memorials and the great dignity of the Tomb of the Unknowns, along with others, will be discussed in this presentation.

Bob Russo is the Vice President of Old Baldy Civil War Round Table and can also be found most Saturday mornings volunteering for the National Park Service at Independence National Historical Park. While there he conducts tours of Independence Hall, Congress Hall and offers interpretation at the Liberty Bell and other sites within the Park. Bob has a vast interest in American history that dates back to his teen years. Bob has been a member of numerous historical organizations over the years that include the Gettysburg Foundation, Surratt Society, Ford’s Theater Society, Civil War Trust, National Constitution Center and others. Bob also received the Certificate of Completion from the Civil War Institute at Manor College in Pennsylvania. In his employment Bob works as the Senior Vice President of a local structural steel and miscellaneous iron fabricator and erector.

This is an often-somber presentation that coincides with the solemn remembrances of Memorial Day. Bob’s hope is that you learn a few things about Arlington National Cemetery that you didn’t know and that this presentation causes you to want to visit or revisit this historic National Cemetery. He further hopes that you will be touched in some way by some of the stories and photos from, Arlington National Cemetery—Garden of Stone.