Image by Gerald Friedrich from Pixabay
Sgt. Trent's former commander, Colonel H.F. Lee, was a major donor and regular volunteer at Lofton County's famous Veteran's Lodge, right at the western edge of Fruitland Memorial Park in Lofton County, VA. The Veteran's Lodge was three miles long, going down the park's western border, and went two miles up into the foothills of the Blue Ridge – it was, in essence, Lofton County's unspoken town.
Major Jonathan Lofton, who had opened the Veteran's Lodge in 1866, had never been a Confederate – too old and too injured from the Mexican War to even be asked, and so remained in Federal blue all his life. He had thus made a rule that was observed by the trustees of the vast Lofton Trust he had left behind: no soldier of any race or creed who had served anywhere on American soil, had he served with valor, could be denied the right to service at the Veteran's Lodge.
Sgt. Trent knew that and STILL did not expect to have his emergency application for transitional housing approved.
“It's just that there is always someone who thinks that if there is one white person doesn't get to live well, a Black family doesn't deserve to live better than that one white person,” he said, “and Lofton County is bad about that.”
Still, the Veteran's Lodge was a bit different from the rest of the South, as was Fruitland Memorial Park … the Loftons and their relatives and friends who were still involved in running all of that were upholding a different kind of legacy.
Sgt. Trent also did not realize that Col. Lee remembered him with they talked on the suicide prevention line, or how much the colonel had been moved by the sergeant's efforts to put his family back together again in spite of the mental health challenges the sergeant and his ex-wife Melissa were facing.
“The thing is,” said Sgt. Trent's father-in-law-to-be-all-over-again, Mr. Thomas Stepforth, “it is still true in Virginia that if Lee is for you, he's for you – he'll give his last and so will a whole lot of other people, trying to stop him!”
Even among the employees of the Lofton Trust, there were people who held up Sgt. Trent's expectations: they kept careful track of how many Black soldiers were considered to have the qualifications to live at the Veteran's Lodge.
“We wouldn't want people to get the impression that there are so many of them.”
Never mind that history said there were quite a lot of them, but then again, in Virginia, there were STILL people mad in 2020 that the United States Colored Troops had showed just how much valor Black soldiers had by sending Confederates running in retreat. Certain people didn't want the truth out, and they worked to keep the numbers down at the Veteran's Lodge.
The problem was that Lee was now their enemy.
Henry Fitzhugh Lee despised the Confederacy and all that it stood for, and he had heard that some of the old diehards even into the 21st century had been finding ways to keep Black soldiers out of the Veteran's Lodge in favor of White soldiers, under the nose of the Lofton Trust.
Sgt. Trent's application gave Col. Lee a chance to look into that.
Yet all Sgt. Trent knew was that his five children were practically falling out of the car, looking, as he drove slowly through Fruitland Memorial Park in the springtime, with all its trees in bloom – a more eye-catching sight could not be imagined until they made it to the housing they would have for at least the next six months – every room offered either a view of the park or the Blue Ridge, and the younger children just ran from room to room, looking.
Eldest daughter Vanna finally just threw her arms around her father.
“Wait until we can get Mamma here – I know she'll just have to get better, I know she will!”
“That's the whole point, Vanna. That's the point. Here we will all have the beauty and structure and support we need – two weeks in quarantine, and then we'll start the next part.”