Middle school ends lesson with a bang

CHILLICOTHE – Students in Donna Towne and Nathan Baker’s eighth-grade American history classes at Chillicothe Middle School will remember the year ending with a bang.

And so will anyone else who lives or works near Yoctangee Park who might have thought they heard gunfire all morning.

Baker, in his first year as an American history teacher, and Towne, who is retiring this year, thought a demonstration would be a great way to wrap up the Civil War section of the year.

Baker; his father, Tom; and his uncle, Tim, have a family tradition of putting on Civil War demonstrations. Tom Baker offered a demonstration for Nathan Baker’s eighth-grade history class when he was in school.

“The guns have been passed down through our family. We still try get out. We actually just went to Gettysburg for the 150-year anniversary,” Nathan Baker said.

The demonstration for the students was part of one of the final lessons they will be taught this year. Tom Baker said it gives the students a little bit of history and some hands-on experience in what life was like for the typical soldier in the Civil War.

As part of the experience, students were able to hold replica ammunition, guns and other items that were likely used by Civil War soldiers over 150 years ago.

The firearms were a large draw at the event. Tom and Tim Baker fired replica guns and cannon into the open land behind the middle school. The sounds had most of the students jumping, but using only half the firepower soldiers in that time would have used helped put the sounds of war in perspective.

Tom Baker said that during the war, it would take seven men to fire a cannon, a task the Baker family accomplished with only three. The Bakers learned to fire the artillery through manuals and groups that do similar demonstrations.

“Together we reinterpret the manuals and come up with a standard method,” Tom Baker said.

Students were brought down to the park in groups to witness the unscripted interpretation of the life in the Civil War. Classes spent about a half hour learning about the clothing, weapons, food, living quarters and lifestyles of soldiers in the 1860s.

“It’s a tradition we’d like to continue on. It’s worked out well,” Nathan Baker said.