Veterans’ Council Asks To Join In Suit
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. – The veterans’ organization which asked the City of Fredericksburg to order a Confederate monument moved, sparking a lawsuit by the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), has filed a petition to intervene in the court case. Attorney William E. Glover, of Glover and Dahnk in Fredericksburg, filed the petition on Aug. 10 on behalf of the Fredericksburg Area Veterans’ Council Inc. (FAVC), asking that the court add the FAVC to the city as a defendant. The FAVC sponsored the Fredericksburg Area War Memorial, a large stone monument on a traffic island in front of the former Maury School. In 2008 it was dedicated to the area war dead from America’s conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries. In April 2009, Matthew Fontaine Maury Camp 1722, Sons of Confederate Veterans, erected a small stone monument memorializing 51 Confederate soldiers buried in an unmarked cemetery on Barton Street, in front of Maury School. It is on a corner of the same traffic island as the FAVC monument. In September 2009 the city council signed a document designating the entire island as belonging exclusively to the Fredericksburg Area War Memorial and ordering relocation of the Confederate monument to an unspecified location. This prompted the SCV to file a lawsuit to prevent their monument from being moved. Attorney Glover’s petition quotes the ordinance and says that the Confederate monument “has no connection whatsoever to the designated purpose of the memorial as established in the ordinance.” The petition continues, “The Plaintiffs [SCV] have refused to permit the removal of the monument which they placed on the subject property despite the plain language of the ordinance requiring its removal.” It said the petitioners “represent area veterans’ groups whose fallen are specifically remembered in the memorial” and have a “direct interest and obligation to insure that the memorial is preserved in the fashion it was conceived and developed, and for which funds were raised for its construction.” The final reason for adding the FAVC as a defendant is to insure that the city’s ordinance “is given full force and effect by the court.” SCV attorney Patrick M. McSweeney, of McSweeney, Crump, Childress & Temple PC of Richmond, Va., observed, “It is quite late in the game for the veterans to try to insert themselves in the lawsuit.” He said, “If allowed to participate, there will be additional litigation expense for the plaintiffs and the City. The City is quite capable of representing the veterans’ interests.” McSweeney was critical of the petition’s reasoning: “The motion ignores the fact that the ordinance the veterans rely on was adopted months after the Confederate monument was erected and the fact that the City has erected on the same traffic island a wayside panel commemorating Liberty Town and Potters Field and specifically mentioning the burial of Confederate soldiers in the cemetery across Barton Street.” The city placed the interpretive panel after the Confederate monument was installed. The FAVC has not asked that it be moved. On Aug. 13, McSweeney filed a motion opposing inclusion of the FAVC as a defendant in the case. At presstime the court had not yet ruled on the FAVC petition. CWN reporter Scott C. Boyd is a member of SCV Camp 1722 and assisted with the Confederate Monument project.
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