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A Sports Dispute Started the Cuban Missile Crisis and Other Odd Facts

Khalid Elhassan October 28, 2019 31 min

Civil War drummer boy reenactors at the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. YouTube

30. Frank Pettis’ Service

Frank Pettis served with the 19^th Wisconsin in Suffolk, Virginia, Berne, North Carolina, and in the sieges of Petersburg and Richmond. He was present at war’s end when his unit became the first Union regiment to fly its colors over the captured Confederate capitol building. He mustered out in August, 1865, and returned to Wisconsin, to work at his father’s tailor shop, before changing careers at age 20 and becoming a miller.

Frank gained prominence in his community and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic, the Civil War’s premier veteran’s association, as well as in the Reedsburg Drum Corps. He raised a family, and died in 1918, aged 68, leaving behind five grown children. His funeral procession was preceded by the Reedsburg Drum Corps, tapping muffled drums, until his coffin was lowered to his final resting place, buried near his former teacher and captain.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.