California University of Pennsylvania Civil War Roundtable
When Kevin Patti goes to work every day, he crosses a threshold into history.
He works in a 38-room house built in 1891. Eleven of the rooms have been restored to enable visitors to see the rooms as they appeared more than a century ago.
"A visitor would feel like they are walking into the 19th century," Patti said, referring to the Clara Barton National Historic Site in Glen Echo, Md., northwest of Washington on the Potomac River.
Making their way through the building from where Barton ran the American Red Cross -- she founded the organization in 1881 -- some 12,000 visitors per year gaze at Barton's rolltop desk, some of her equipment, supplies and foodstuffs she used in her relief efforts, relics of her life, and mementoes of her trips and experiences.
For the past seven years, Patti has been park ranger at the Clara Barton National Historic Site and on Thursday he will be the featured speaker at the gathering of the California University of Pennsylvania Civil War Roundtable.
His presentation, "Between the Bullet and the Hospital: Clara Barton and the Civil War," will focus on Barton's activities and will highlight her war relief efforts, issues that led a shy Massachusetts adolescent into the public spotlight during and after the conflict. Patti will trace Barton's role in the war, highlight battlefields where her relief work brought comfort to the wounded and dying, and how she fit in as independent relief worker as the war progressed.
Patti, a 15-year veteran of the National Park Service, noted that he was into Scouting as a youth and found a summer job with the park service outside Washington, and loved the opportunity. After spending eight years with the service following graduation from Montgomery College, he applied for a permanent position at the Clara Barton site and got the position.
However, Patti readily admits that prior to taking the job, he "was not really into Clara Barton, but I have discovered she was truly a fascinating person. She dealt with various struggles when she was young, including issues of depression, but overcame those issues to accomplish remarkable things. I have learned so much about her in these past seven years. It's an honor to work in the house where she lived."
So much that, he modestly admitted, he has become an expert on the inspiring woman.
So much an expert, in fact, that he was recently asked and sent by the U.S. State Department to deliver an address honoring Barton in the former Soviet republic and now independent nation of Armenia.
Barton's history
Born to a father who rose to the rank of captain in the military, Barton worked through childhood shyness to become a teacher at age 17.
Wanting more out of life, at age 30 she attended college in New York, then settled, temporarily, in New Jersey, where she started a free school.
The student body population was six the first day. Fourteen more students were in school the second day and by week's end, 40. Leaving New Jersey for Washington, she worked in the U.S. Patent Office.
When the Civil War broke out, President Abraham Lincoln put out a call for volunteers. Many, from the Massachusetts 6th Infantry, arrived in the Capital after being assaulted verbally and physically in Baltimore. Barton recognized some of those young recruits as her former students and issued a call for supplies. Helping every way possible, Barton aspired to be on the battlefield where she could help the wounded.
Following the Civil War, Barton continued her relief work, first with the International Red Cross, and later founding the American Red Cross in 1881. She led relief workers in aiding victims of the 1889 Johnstown flood. Shelters built in Johnstown provided the model for the Red Cross facility in Glen Echo, the first headquarters of the American Red Cross.
In telling the story of Clara Barton, Patti describes "in the nineteenth century how a single woman ended up on battlefields with wagons of supplies, where women did not go at the time."
