Editor, Gazette-Journal:

The fact that my name did not appear on the Aug. 18 ad encouraging people to speak out in favor of preserving our Confederate memorial surprised me as much as you. Was it an oversight?

The writing of the ad was not done by me, but as a major contributor to the cost of the ad, I readily agreed to pay for it, and I wholeheartedly agree with its contents. I am very aware that there are very determined (woke?) people who, with the fire of progressivism as a true religion, want to remove and/or destroy that monument, which is really a gravestone to all the soldiers and sailors who did not come home after the war.

I personally fought in an unpopular war, Vietnam, for two tours, and remember people throwing things at me and other soldiers arriving back, being told we were baby killers, etc. Should our monuments also be torn down? In my opinion, “wokeism” is the great evil of our time. It comes from the same group who hated Vietnam soldiers: socialists, commu...