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RALPH HAPPEL: HISTORICAL RICHES

April 28, 2007 12:35 am

EARLY IN 1972, 61-year-old Ralph Happel was on the verge of retirement after more than 35 years as a National Park Service historian, almost all of them on duty on the battlefields around Fredericksburg. I arrived that winter to take up the post of chief historian, as a Californian youth utterly devoid of the local roots so much valued in Fredericksburg in those days, but devoutly interested in Virginia's Civil War people and sites.

Ralph promptly introduced me to his friend, the incomparably knowledgeable and incomparably eccentric George H.S. King, whose cache of genealogical lore equaled Ralph's own historical expertise. For many years, both George and Ralph fed me bushels of priceless regional historical tidbits that still clutter my files in pleasing profusion.

When Happel first went to work on the battlefields in the 1930s, some few elderly veterans survived, albeit at an age when genuinely useful recollection had faded. The generation that followed them, though, bridged the years and maintained a high interest.

Ralph assiduously cultivated such folk, and extracted primary sources from them. He was on close terms with the member of that second generation who was the most important for purposes of Fredericksburg-area Civil War history--Massachusetts politician Fred W. Cross.

Across several decades, Fred Cross regularly visited the Civil War battlefields around Fredericksburg and systematically interviewed veterans of the fighting and civilians who had lived here during the 1860s. He drew maps and took photographs by the hundreds, documenting buildings that subsequently disappeared and sites fated for destruction.

Some of Cross' photographs supply the only surviving visual record of Civil War places. Ralph stayed in steady touch with Fred, and at Cross' death in 1950 he left to Ralph his Civil War books and manuscripts and photographs. The treasure trove of regional history remained in Ralph's estate, and was sold by Fredericksburg's Bill Beck to local collectors who now preserve that important archive.

Ralph's eclectic enthusiasms included gardens and words. Numerous yards in and around Fredericksburg contain plants that he raised and gave to friends. Ralph's philological endeavors prompted a letter to noted etymologist H.L. Mencken, describing discovery of the use of the tart slang phrase "son of a bitch" by a Sapony Indian in 1724 court records. Mencken responded with profuse thanks, but noted that, "unhappily," the pending Supplement II to his classic "The American Language" "will include no discussion of wicked words."

During his working career, Ralph and his wife, Louise, lived on Caroline Street downtown and spent weekends at a country place in the Passapatanzy neighborhood. After his retirement, they spent more and more time at "the creek," and eventually moved there exclusively.

Late in his life, Ralph turned thorough research into a fond history of the earliest recorded days of his beloved waterfront locale. A Fredericksburg group published "Annals of the Patawomekes: The Decline of the Potomac Creek Indians," but rather sloppily did not bother to put a date in the imprint.

The last letter I received from Ralph, a few weeks before his death, went on at characteristic length, in typically crisp and literate style, soliciting my help with a research need at the University of Virginia. Ralph had written to the university library asking for a bit of information, citing his decades of affiliation with the school, his donations to its causes, and his lifelong intimate friendship with the recently deceased head of the libraries.

"I have had no answer," he wrote sadly. "They could at least have written to say, 'We don't wash no windows.'" Ralph had outlived an age of gracious accommodation, and survived into an era of casual indifference.

When he died on Nov. 14, 2002, at the age of 91, Ralph was buried in the City Cemetery. Fittingly, his grave site is situated within a few yards of the tombstone over Gen. Seth Maxwell Barton, least well-known of the six generals in the cemetery. Forty years earlier, Ralph and his friend George King had procured the stone, to identify Gen. Barton's theretofore unmarked burial location.

Shakespeare's famous eulogy of Julius Caesar insists pessimistically that despite men's best achievements, "the good is oft interred with their bones." Ralph has put the lie to that ancient maxim. In addition to a rich legacy of writings and files, he left to the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust more than $235,000 to help preserve the battlefields on which he labored for so long and well.

The CVBT established a Ralph Happel Award, presented in the form of a dazzling sterling silver medallion emblazoned with Ralph's likeness and the recipient's name, to commemorate Ralph's contributions.

At its annual meeting next weekend, the CVBT will present the 2007 Ralph Happel Award to Fredericksburger Enos Richardson for his stellar achievements in the preservation field.

Robert K. Krick of Fredericksburg was chief historian of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park for 30 years. He is the author of 15 books. His latest work, "Civil War Weather in Virginia," will be published by the University of Alabama Press in July. E-mail him in care of
Email: gwoolf@freelancestar.com.