A ceremony in Greene County Friday will honor 32 high school students and two teachers who left to fight in the Civil War.
Students, teachers and historians in the county have created two monuments to honor the Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey, who enlisted in the Union Army in 1861. Greene County Supervisor Peter Bardole says the boys chose to sacrifice their futures, yet the story is largely unknown.
“They volunteered, and they knew what they were getting into I think, when they did volunteer; that it wasn’t going to be easy. But they did that for their country and for their state,” Bardole says. The supervisors approved one of the monuments that will be unveiled at the Greene County Courthouse.
Chuck Offenburger with the county’s Historical Society first uncovered the story, which he presented to a Greene County High School class. Offenburger says the students were shocked the schoolboys didn’t have more recognition and a group of them chose to design the monuments being revealed at the event. “And they studied a lot about that, about what it was really like for soldiers back in the Civil War, and, you know, I think it probably has changed many of them,” he says.
A Greene County High School student and teacher who led the memorial effort will speak during the ceremony. Other students will dress up as soldiers and march at the event.
