Gettysburg documentary premieres online
WQED in Pittsburgh, the nation’s first community-supported television station, will present today another first by combining history and online technology to bring together preservationists, scholars, and all persons interested in American history and the symbolism and stories told by monuments and statuary.
“Stone Soldiers: Saving the Gettysburg Monuments,” a new, 30-minute documentary, will be broadcast on WQED TV in Pittsburgh while it is also “simul-streamed” online for a worldwide audience at www.wqed.org at 8pm (EST).
Every year, nearly 2 million visitors from around the world admire the 1300-plus monuments at Gettysburg National Military Park in Gettysburg, Pa. Unfortunately, time, nature and vandals have taken a toll. This documentary profiles the people working to protect, repair, and raise funds for these “stone soldiers.” The program also showcases the monuments which have unique and poignant connections to Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania.
“We know that since Ken Burns’ ‘The Civil War’ documentary on PBS, the number of people interested in preserving American history, especially the fight for freedom that the Civil War represented, continues to grow,” said Deborah L. Acklin, executive vice president and general manager of WQED. “We decided that where our on-air television signal could not reach our website still could. We decided to use our online technology to link people together to see and hear these emotional stories of Americans working to keep history alive.”
Gettysburg National Military Park contains the largest collection of outdoor sculpture in the world. In addition to the monuments, approximately 400 cannons dot the landscape, making it easier for visitors to understand what happened during the three-day battle in July of 1863.
The Battle of Gettysburg was a critical turning point in the American Civil War, a conflict that determined the fate of the United States. Gettysburg, the site where the armies of the North and the South clashed, was first preserved by a small group of patriotic citizens and later by the country as a whole. Since 1933, the National Park Service (NPS) has cared for Gettysburg National Military Park as a symbol of America’s struggle to survive as a nation, and as a lasting memorial to the armies and soldiers who served in that great conflict.
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