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Canonsburg will honor Letterman on Veterans Day

Observer-Reporter - 7/24/2017

Welcome home, Jonathan Letterman.Canonsburg will be honoring this native son, an innovative Civil War physician, with a historical marker in a most appropriate location: on the municipal building lawn, believed to be the site of Letterman's boyhood home. And the plan is to do it on an appropriate date: Nov. 11, Veterans Day."This man has been largely forgotten. I believe the whole community should realize he was a major figure in history," R.T. Bell, borough council president, said over the phone Saturday afternoon.Letterman, medical director of the Army of the Potomac, is credited with saving countless lives during the bitter war waged from 1861 to 1865. He implemented a triage system, a process of sorting out the wounded according to those who were in the greatest need of urgent treatment. It was modeled after procedures believed to have been introduced a half-century earlier in the Napoleonic Wars, and added order and efficiency to battlefield treatment.He did what he deemed necessary, taking over houses and barns; turning tents into field hospitals; and coordinating ambulance corps, using two- and four-wheeled carts to transport the wounded.Many of the principles he introduced are still in use today.Civil War Trust magazine refers to the doctor as "the Father of Battlefield Medicine."Until 1862, when Letterman was appointed medical director, the Union did not have a formal procedure for treatment. "Soldiers had to get to the hospital on their own, and would die from injuries that were minor," Bell said of the first year of the Civil War. Many of the wounded were unable to move, were not treated and died in the field,Rea Andrew Redd, a history professor and director of the library at Waynesburg University, fired the first shot in Letterman's defense. He got approval from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to put up a marker, a proposal he later presented to borough council. Redd, 65, of Peters Township, has met several times with Bell and Mayor David Rhome on this matter, most recently Thursday, when they finalized a location for the memorial and selected a date to dedicate it.Pending council approval, of course. "I don't foresee a problem," said Bell, who anticipates a thumb's up at the Aug. 8 voting meeting.The marker will be placed on the lawn at the corner of East Pike Street and Greenside Avenue, to the left of the borough building entrance. That location, according to the professor, is where Letterman lived as a child and where Letterman's father ? also a surgeon named Jonathan - practiced medicine."The Letterman family home was later used by Canonsburg as its borough building," said Redd, who also is a military reenactor.Rhome and Bell are pushing for a Veterans Day dedication. "That is an ideal time," Rhome said. Letterman will be honored along with all who have served in the military and its medical corps, plus current medical and emergency personnel and first responders.Redd said in an email the historical marker "will be done in accordance with the Pennsylvania History and Museum Commission's regulations." He said the memorial and installation will cost less than $1,100 and that "a significant portion of the funds have been raised."After a year and a half as medical director, Letterman left the Army in 1864 and moved with his wife, Mary, to San Francisco, where he became a coroner. She died a few years later and he fell into a deep depression. After a series of illnesses, the doctor from Canonsburg died in March 1872, a mere 47 years old.In a little over three months, the war hero will become a hometown hero.