Editor, Gazette-Journal:

This letter is in response to Bobby Dobson’s letter (“Answered Prayers,” Nov. 11 Readers Write).

I understand the emotional connection of standing at ancestors’ graves and contemplating their lives; their hardships; their triumphs; their dogged perseverance. So I understand the desire to have a place to memorialize ancestors whose graves are far from home.

When I think about the statue in front of the historic courthouse in Mathews, I am curious about the men who left Mathews to fight for the Confederacy: How many volunteered? How many were drafted? How many died in battle? How many died of disease? How many did not return to the county? Also, I am curious about the lives of the enslaved people of Mathews; about their struggles for freedom and for citizenship in a country that declared that all men are created equal, but where they were held in bondage. There is much history to uncover and to process.

However, I am not curious about the reason that...