Sarah Kay Bierle: Thankful For . . .

While I’m grateful for the many friends, mentors, and colleagues who have encouraged and shaped my history path, this blog post is about someone who impacted my journey and is no longer with us.

I knew Lieutenant Colonel Troy Marshall as the site director at New Market Battlefield State Historical Park, and we met in 2018 when I was on a research trip for my book about that battle. In the midst of giving me a crash course on topography, battle-line distances, units, and perspective on the role of the Virginia Military Institute cadets at the 1864 fight, he taught and shared information…without putting down how much more research I still needed to do. He taught me how to pronounce some of the localized or foreign names connected to the history. He showed me how to find the old road trace at the top of New Market Gap, and we stood there in the early April chill for a quiet moment, almost listening for Boyd’s ill-fated cavalrymen.

He gave me a lot of practical advice like “picture a full-size bus and that’s approximately an artillery battery spacing…typically.” Keep walking the ground. Get low on the ground if the sources say the soldiers knelt or lay. Don’t forget what happens if someone stabs someone with a bayonet. Look beyond the obvious story and find something new. “Get off the interstate – that’s not where you’ll find the history.”

When I came back to New Market for the book release, I kept watching and listening to his interactions and style of leadership at the battlefield and museum. I learned about keeping the practical event information close when he let me ride back to the museum in his “headquarters golfcart” and I saw how he had taped his simple logistics and safety map to the inner top of the roof. I noticed how he made time for his family and always talked about them. I saw him cleaning the large museum windows in December 2020 when I stopped by with Christmas cookies for the staff; he could have bossed someone else to do that work, but he was doing it. In my journal, I noted “be a leader who cleans the windows.”

Practical, honest mentoring. Guidance for New Market history. Watching aspects of good leadership. That was our professional friendship. And it ended too soon from an earthly perspective.

The call came in June 2021. A few weeks later in July: the funeral. He had touched and influenced so many lives – from family, friends, military colleagues, church members, battlefield staff and volunteers, and acquaintances. There was no more room in the church sanctuary and still people came. Even the details of his funeral service, which he had written years before and put in a file drawer, showed his faith, leadership, kindness, compassion, and care.

Sometimes, I stop at a particular place at New Market battlefield and think about Lieutenant Colonel Marshall and his advice during our relatively brief acquaintance. Sometimes, I just drive past and think, “I wish you were still here, sir.” I’m grateful for the history notes and tour guiding advice, but I’m mostly grateful I had the opportunity to see a strong example of professionalism and service leadership.

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” General George S. Patton, Jr., 1945 (emphasis added)