High school Civil War trips may come to an end

PALMER — After taking students on a Civil War trip for 16 years and teaching for 43 years, Daniel Gorman said he has “mixed emotions” about his final year at Palmer High School.

Gorman, the International Baccalaureate history teacher at Palmer High, first planned a Civil War trip for students 20 years ago. From speaking to him about it, it’s clear the trip means a lot to him.

Although Gorman plans to retire at the end of this year, the field trip may not actually be ending, he said.

Gorman said he is thinking about organizing a future trip for adults and doing more trips with other schools as well. His encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil War could be open for even more people in the near future.

I was one of the Palmer High students who traveled to Washington, D.C., with Gorman last month.

The 2015 adventure began in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where we explored the Fredericksburg Battlefield and various other places of interest. Gorman began to lecture with his usual confident and engaging storytelling manner, which made me feel as if I was being transported to the past.

Gorman said that it is important to “take the classroom to the field.”

“That’s where you learn,” he said.

And right he was. We went to the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Petersburg, and Manassas Battlefields and toured the areas of the Seven Days Campaign. Not only did many of my peers and I learn the historical importance of the battles, we felt what it was like to actually be there. We were able to see first-hand some of what the soldiers saw and were able to walk on the ground where many died for the future of our nation.

“It actually defined us as a nation,” Gorman said, of Civil War history. “It was probably inevitable to fight that war, but in the end, we as a society have benefited more from the Civil War than any other (event) in history.”

The Civil War was not all that we were able to appreciate on the trip.

After six days in Virginia, we headed to Washington, D.C., where we stayed at a very old, but comfortable, hotel in the heart of the city. We took the metro daily, which allowed us to live the city life for five days, something we don’t get to experience in the Valley.

Meeting U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, experiencing the enormous Arlington National Cemetery, attending a play at Ford’s Theatre, exploring the Smithsonians, and seeing the many buildings, monuments, and memorials famous to the world was breathtaking and important for us all.

After D.C., we stopped in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, for a day to learn about a great prelude to the war. The next day we toured the Antietam Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland, and then the Harrisburg National Civil War Museum in Pennsylvania. Finally, we made our way to the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, staying there for four amazing days. Not only did we explore the land where this significant battle was fought, we also raced up Little Round Top and went looking for ghosts at night.

Gorman said the “ghostly endeavors” have been some of his favorite moments of the trip every year.

“We’ve had some strange occurrences (in Gettysburg) over the years,” he said.

Palmer High senior Matthew Moye said Gettysburg is his favorite part, too.

Moye said he was so inspired by Gorman that he has made the trip three times.

Gorman has created a scholastic trip that is very hard to match and has given students the opportunity to see, smell and feel United States history, he said.

It was a privilege to be a part of Gorman’s last trip as a Palmer High School teacher.

Artur Kavaliov is a senior at Palmer High School.