Saturday, November 07, 2015

J:
My visits this last Tuesday to the Congressional Cemetery and the Washington Navy Yard really got me stoked about the D.I. Heritage Project. I'm still going to finish my detailed descriptions of each of the 19 armed amphibious invasions of Dauphin Island (I'm also going to add Andrew Ellicott's voyage from N.O. to D.I. in 1799, the 1837 Creek Indians' Ft. Morgan encampment prior to the horrendous steamboat MONMOUTH disaster and the 1846 U.S. Naval Invasion of Mexico which came out of Mobile and New Orleans) but I've hit a delay on getting a book from a lending library. Let me assure you that the "#10 Invasion: Galvez' Siege of Mobile" which is DAUPHIN ISLAND'S STORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION is a work in progress and will be finished soon. Anyway, when I finish the descriptions of over TWENTY ARMED AMPHIBIOUS INVASIONS OF DAUPHIN ISLAND, it will be easy for anyone to see that any military or nautical school from ANY BRANCH OF SERVICE from ANY COUNTRY on the face of the Earth should be interested in taking their students on a field trip to D.I.

The project I plan to begin today will be to place on the blog a listing of all D.I. streets found in S. Blake McNeely's book along with their location, a Wikipedia link for its namesake and a Find-A-Grave link for the namesake if it applies. Here's an example of what I'm talking about for #1.

#1. Admiral Raphael Semmes Avenue: named for Admiral Raphael Semmes, one of America's best known American naval officers, a respected citizen of Mobile who commanded the renowned Confederate ship, ALABAMA. This avenue is located SE of the 4-way stop between Forney Johnston Drive  and Audubon Street. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Semmes
Findagrave site for Admiral Raphael Semmes http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=21356

What I saw at the Congressional Cemetery really got my attention. In 2012 a guy named Peter Ekman chaired a committee for the cemetery called the QR CODE PROJECT. It was the first time that a cemetery posted QR codes (those little "ink blot" looking-boxes that activate an Iphone app to find websites.) They attached QR codes on little metal stakes and placed them by the graves of important people. I was thinking we could do the same thing with historic markers and street signs on Dauphin Island.

The other thing I thought about was building a huge billboard with a street map of D.I. and placing it somewhere on LeMoyne where people could park and look at it. You could dispense the Chamber of Commerce maps at this location. Include both Pelican Island and West End as EXTENSIONS of the billboard and emphasize that people can visit these abandoned beaches at their own risk and include safety precautions including carrying water. So many visitors come onto the island and have no idea how really huge it is and how they could explore the area FOR A LIFETIME and still want to learn more.

Go ahead and warn Gene that I'll be back at Fins come January bugging him about starting the D.I. Trivia Contest based on D.I. street names. I also want to make 2016 the first year that the DAUPHIN ISLAND ARMCHAIR ADMIRAL TROPHY is awarded to the winner of the trivia contest.

O.K. That's it for now. Just wanted to let you know what I'm up to. Have a happy holiday and I hope to see you in January, 2016.

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