Pa. Monuments license plates revenue to help maintain Gettysburg monuments

Stone and metal markers honoring the sacrifices of Pennsylvania soldiers at Gettysburg will get a boon this year from some Pennsylvania drivers.

Revenue from special Pennsylvania Monuments license plates — with the words “Gettysburg, 1863” and a rendering of the Pennsylvania Memorial — will help maintain state-related monuments. The plates likely will become available for purchase in November.

“The National Parks Service can't provide the restoration and repair of monuments that they once did. We have to pick up the slack,” said state Rep. Harry Readshaw, who sponsored the amendment that added monument plates to other commemorative license plates available through PennDOT.

Readshaw, D-Carrick, said he hadn't been to the battlefield before he became involved in preservation. He read a newspaper article 18 years ago about the sorry state of Pennsylvania's monuments and resolved to fix them — first by raising money and establishing an endowment for monuments, then by pushing for 17 years to sell the license plates to steer funding to maintenance.

The legislation Gov. Tom Corbett signed in July directs $23 of the $54 fee for the plates to the National Parks Service for upkeep and repair of Pennsylvania's monuments.

Nearly 150 of the 1,300 monuments at Gettysburg National Military Park honor Pennsylvania soldiers, and park staff try to have them all cleaned, maintained and preserved at least once every three years on a $160,000 budget, said Katie Lawhon, spokeswoman for the park.

“It will really help us do more,” Lawhon said. “The funding would allow us to do more of the annual maintenance and improve our ability to do emergency work” for monuments that are damaged.

Acid rain, vandals and metal scavengers damage memorials in ways that need professional restoration — not just the cleaning, brush clearing and light maintenance that volunteers such as the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves Pittsburg Rifles, a re-enactment group, are able to provide, said Rea Andrew Redd, president of the re-enactors.

“My company and I go to Gettysburg every so often and take care of a monument,” said Redd, a librarian and Civil War historian at Waynesburg University.

Andy Masich, president and CEO of Heinz History Center in the Strip District, said Pennsylvania was the most well-represented state in the battle, with about 23,400 soldiers, and has monuments representing some of the most interesting parts of the three-day battle.

The 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers monument, for example, includes a statue of Sallie, a small dog adopted by the regiment that accompanied it into battle until she was killed in 1865, Masich said. A monument to the 83rd Pennsylvania Infantry, organized in Erie, includes a statue in the likeness of Brig. Gen. Strong Vincent, mortally wounded while defending Little Round Top on the battle's second day.

The monument to Gen. Alexander Hays of the 63rd Pennsylvania Infantry, a civil engineer for Pittsburgh who is buried in Allegheny Cemetery, stands near where his troops helped repulse Pickett's Charge on the third day of the battle, which ultimately turned the Confederate Army back to the South.

Redd and Masich said they'd consider buying monument plates.

“The park at Gettysburg, the monuments, the cemeteries, they're classrooms,” Redd said. “All these are lessons. People can go to them and see their stories.”

Matthew Santoni is a Trib Total Media staff writer.