New Rumley, Ohio-
Absent long yellow curls and the vigor of a dashing young cavalry officer, but nevertheless a Custer “with a mission,” Brice Calhoun Custer, of Georgetown, Texas set the record straight in New Rumley, Ohio last Saturday. Seated beneath the monument to his famous relative and military predecessor, Brice Custer, who is now 87 years old, and a former jet-fighter pilot in Korea, gave the dedication speech, and the justification for his demand for changes to a picture pavilion exhibit that was located there, which had its origins in 1968. It is apropos that he now resides in that state George Bush says you “Don’t mess with!”
General George Armstrong Custer, Brice’s great-grand uncle, was born in New Rumley, located in Harrison County, Ohio, on December 5, 1839. He made his first headlong charge into the world in a small frame addition to an old log cabin that once served as a tavern for stagecoach travelers passing through that part of southeastern Ohio. General Custer’s maternal grandfather James G. Ward once owned this establishment, which was later purchased by Israel R. Kirkpatrick, Mrs. Emanuel Custer’s first husband. At the age of 10, young George Custer moved to Monroe, Michigan in 1850, and lived with his half-sister, Lydia Kirkpatrick Reed, and attended a boy’s academy before going back to Ohio and becoming a schoolteacher at age 16.
Years after his death at the Little Big Horn in Montana, and long after the old log cabin was destroyed, the State of Ohio finally got around to honoring Custer with a statue at his birthplace in 1932. This was just a few days short of twenty years after Michigan had already erected a beautiful equestrian monument in Monroe, with a dedication ceremony that included the President of the United States, (who was also an Ohioan), William Howard Taft. Mrs. Custer, who by then was in her nineties, but keenly alert, was then residing on Park Avenue in New York City; and, because of her health, she could not attend the dedication. However, she did speak to the crowd gathered in New Rumley that day by a loudspeaker connected to the telephone line, while the ceremony was broadcast to the world. This new statue in Ohio was apparently not all that pleasing to her eyes, as she is recorded to have once remarked later, that “It made him look- too foppish!”
Around 1968, some local people headed by banker Jay Spiker, of Scio, Ohio, got the idea of doing something more at Custer’s birthplace, and found enough money (around $15,000), in state funds to erect a new “picture pavilion.” The idea was to tell Custer’s story to any visitors who happened to get lost on Ohio back roads, and wonder what the statue was doing there. This original “picture pavilion” was designed and created by the wizards at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus, and was only about the size of a country outhouse. It was erected and dedicated in 1972, about the time the Viet Nam war was the most unpopular, and the song “Mr. Custer” was the anti-war anthem. It was later enlarged with a few additional picture panels that merely added to the original historical inaccuracies and negative innuendoes of the earlier one.
This whole exhibit has never set well with the local Custer aficionados, like Leroy Van Horne, who himself was born in New Rumley, and who is now the Auditor in Carroll County, next door to Harrison County, Ohio. As a board member of the local Custer Memorial Association, Van Horne has worked almost seven years to have positive changes made to this exhibit; and, with the help of Brice Custer, noted historian Bob Utley, and a funeral director, Bob Novak of Columbus, Ohio, this has finally been accomplished. This new exhibit now contains beautiful color picture panels, and has eliminated that ugly depiction panel of Custer, by artist Leonard Ruskin, that was used also on the cover of the book “Son of the Morning Star.”
Like many other Custer family members before him, Brice Custer served in the American armed forces as an Air Force jet-fighter pilot in Korea. He flew F-86 and other jet fighter planes in combat against North Korean, Chinese, and Russian pilots. His father Brice was a colonel in the U.S. Army, as were his brother George and uncle Charles. He taught physics at the Air Force Academy and holds degrees in electrical and nuclear engineering fields. In 1999, he authored a book on his famous predecessor, “The Sacrificial Lion,” which is the first “Custer” book written by a family member since General Custer’s wife Elizabeth Bacon Custer wrote her three famous, best-selling books over 100 years ago.
Brice Custer, along with members of his family, including his wife and two sons, Brice, Jr. and Garry Owen, also from Texas, and his niece Janet, from Monroe, Michigan helped unveil the “new and improved” picture panels. Friar Vincent Heier, Catholic Bishop in St. Louis, otherwise known as the “Custer Priest,” gave the invocation, and assisted in the unveiling. Living historians, that included Robert Harris of Jacksonville, Florida (Confederate General Thomas L. Rosser), and Steve Alexander (General Custer), who is Monroe, Michigan’s goodwill Custer ambassador, were resplendent in uniforms and costumes appropriate to the occasion.
Note: As part of the celebration, Alexander performed Custer’s famous salute to General Rosser, as in October of 1864, prior to a battle conducted in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia that resulted in the total routing of Rosser’s cavalry and soon became jokingly known as the “Woodstock Races!” Alexander’s salute was made on the main road in New Rumley, that used to be the old stagecoach route, in front of Custer’s birthplace, and once again pleased his devoted followers. Events like this happen the first Saturday in June every year in New Rumley, which is “Custer Day,” and then Alexander leaves for Montana, to perform in the annual reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand.