Wheeler students welcome new Civil War vet memorial

CROWN POINT | More than 100 Col. John Wheeler Middle School social studies students filed past the school's newest memorial Wednesday, paying homage to a Crown Point Civil War veteran who served under their school's namesake.

Some students stopped to read the memorial inscription, others to shoot photos, as they passed the 113-year-old original marble headstone of Union Army Pvt. John Sheehan, a Crown Point man who served in Company B of Wheeler's 20th Indiana Infantry during the war.

Sheehan was among the original 100 Lake County volunteers for Company B, which Wheeler raised in 1861 using his own resources and influence in the community. While Wheeler died in 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg, Sheehan survived the war, though he was wounded in battle in Petersburg, Va., in 1864, according to military records.

Sheehan's marble marker was deteriorating at his graveside at Crown Point's St. Mary's Cemetery on South Street. It was replaced in the fall with a new granite marker provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs through the volunteer efforts of the Calumet Region Civil War Preservation Project.

Volunteers from the preservation project, including local excavator Kenneth Ziese and his son, Kenny, a student at Wheeler, refurbished the old marble marker and built the display stand for the new stone for permanent exhibition in the school. Sheehan's grave was one of 45 Lake and Porter county Civil War veterans to receive new granite grave markers in honor of the war's 150th anniversary last year.

The students participating in Wednesday's dedication ceremony are undertaking historical preservation efforts through a classroom letter-writing campaign.

The students have written a series of letters to the U.S. military and congressional leaders, asking for the posthumous promotion of Col. Wheeler, who died at the Battle of Gettysburg, to the rank of brigadier general; seeking a portion of the boulder from the Gettysburg battlefield near where Wheeler died to be placed at the school; and asking for a U.S. Navy commendation for the 20th Indiana Infantry, which came to the aid of a stranded and embattled Navy ship in Virginia.

Several of the letters have been delivered to the offices of Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., and other government leaders.