The Part I had in the Placement of Douglas' Cenotaph.
At the beginning I was the Commander of John C Pemberton Camp # 1354, Sons of Confederate Veterans, of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Approx. a dozen years past either Compatriot Jim Huffman recruited us or we recruited him to assist in the Project. The Project was to place Cenotaphs for the men in his Company of the 43rd Regiment of Mississippi Volunteers, who gave their lives in the Defense of Vicksburg. There were 20 - Some odd of them. Regardless, one of our members went to Mississippi State Department of Archives & History and gathered the needed information. (And as you know the rules have changed since and it is more difficult now.) (And also, as you know, it is a long drawn out affair and takes a while.) We ordered the stones and I pulled a string and had them delivered to a commercial place.(They had the equipment to handle them, accepted them and stored them.) As you know they are said to weigh 180 lbs each, however they are not uniform and I would think the smaller ones probably weigh this amount, however some of them weigh twice this amouint and perhaps 3 times this amount. They are heavy. I picked them up about 6 at the time i think, in my pickup and delivered them to the Cemetery. We set them in the next couple of weeks. It almost killed up all. We were all old, it was hot and the ground was hard. But we got it done.