Visiting the past

Elena Siddall has a talent for sharing history. After speaking with her, you can see that this is because her existence, her family, her heritage, and her passion are all tied to the events of World War I, an event that rocked the lives of people from places like Russian and Riga, Latvia, all the way to places like Fishersville.

Siddall is the curator of the World War I exhibit on display at the Fishersville branch of the Augusta County Library, which will remain there through March. The exhibit is an eclectic assortment. In addition to maps, uniforms, weaponry and old photos, there are postcards, poetry books, sheet music, and yellowed packages of gauze from a first aid kit on loan from Fort Pickett. She shares a view of the war through people, sentiments, and personal stories, rather than through statistics, textbook definitions, and numbers.

“The exhibit is not just about battles,” Siddall says. “It engages in a different way. It helps viewers and students understand what the war was about, how empires ended with the war, and how so many problems were created that are unresolved to this day.”

The displays set up at the library will serve as Siddall’s fifth showing in eight years. Previously her pieces have been seen in Matthews County and York County. She feels that the Fishersville library, which is newly renovated, is “just perfect.” Although she later admitted that she had more stuff than the space allowed because she has been collecting for over 40 years.

Siddall’s interest in the past began with a simple photograph and a family story. Her maternal grandfather, Sergei Pechatken, was a czarist officer that served in the Russian Imperial Navy. He had married Siddall’s grandmother in 1914, then went off to sea in 1915; temporarily leaving his wife who was pregnant with Siddall’s mother. “He was in a gulf off of Finland, after World War I had already started in Europe. His boat was torpedoed by a U26 German boat and he died. That was June 4, 1915. My mother was born July 5, 1915; only one month after his death.”

Alone and with an infant in Russia, which was involved in the war, and later would face a revolution and a civil war, Siddall’s grandmother fled to Riga, Latvia where Siddall’s grandfather was from. The family remained there for some time; Siddall’s parents were married and had four children. However, life there was still unstable, and the family fled again Soviets reoccupy in 1944. “We go to Czechoslovakia. We end up in Germany at the end of the war. We end up in refugee camps. And in 1949 we come to America. Our sponsors in America were Margaret and Fletcher Collins of the famous Collins of the Shenandoah Valley. Just a remarkable, remarkable family. So we lived with them, my parents, my grandmother, and four kids. He was a Mary Baldwin English professor and she was a playwright. We were supposed to live with them for six months. We lived with them for 18 months. One house with no indoor plumbing. At the Pennyroyal Farm.”

So the interest was there, but the collection itself did not begin until later. Siddall lived in Richmond for about 30 years and began finding pieces to her future exhibit in flea markets and used bookstores. “There was one particular one that really specialized in World War I poetry for some reason. I started buying them; I never paid a lot of money for any of them, but I started looking up the value of them because some of them were in a case. And I was like, wow, these items are rare. But that’s how I got most of my stuff; flea markets and bookstores. I don’t remember ever paying a whole lot for anything.”

She began doing displays in 2002, but most pivotal one when she was partnered with the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, which loaned her trench shots to be added to the display. For the current display in Fishersville she asked about using the shots again and they were given to her to keep.

When asked if she had a favorite item, she chose a lamp made from a shell casing. The lamp is still in working condition and is classified as “trench art” due to its creation right on the battlefield. Siddall elaborated saying that after everything was made ready in the trench, there was a lot of waiting. Some soldiers filled this time with a sort of improv arts and craft time and many examples of trench art can still be found today.

Also noted in her display is a list of ambulance drivers that includes John Dos Passos, Dashiell Hammett, E. E. Cummings, Hemingway and other writers who would later make up the “Lost Generation.”

Siddall believes that the next generation must know about these events and that they are the keys to our future. “If you can just catch a young person’s interest with some fact or some piece or some picture, you can make them see that this matters.”

The display opened this past Saturday and will remain through March. Also, a screening of the movie “Paths of Glory”, a 1957 American anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick, will be announced so continue checking the Augusta Free Press Events Calendar and the library’s website.

Viewing of the display is free, open to the public, and available during the library’s regular hours. Mon-Thu 9a.m. – 8p.m. and Fri – Sat 9a.m. – 5p.m.

Text or e-mail questions to ask@augustacountylibrary.org or call 540.949.6354 or 540.885.3961.

Story by Suzi Foltz