Tales from the road: A brief visit with son of a Civil War soldier

Bill Pool, a World War II veteran, with admirers at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Marshfield, Mo.

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Truth be told, Mrs. B and I are smitten with small-town festivals.

Over the course of our 32-year marriage, we’ve ogled “The World’s Largest MoonPie” at the MoonPie festival in blistering-hot Bell Buckle, Tenn., listened to fiddlers at the sweltering Smithville (Tenn.) Jamboree and met the actor who played Chip in the old “My Three Sons” TV series at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Marshfield, Mo., where they have, like, 100 churches per square mile.

(Please note: We've also attended a hot chicken festival in Nashville, but it's no longer a small town.)

In late April at the Cherry Blossom Festival, following a chance meeting with the daughters of Bill Virdon — the former Pittsburgh Pirates star outfielder and manager — the festival director pointed me to a room in a church that served as a festival HQ.

Bill Pool (bottom right)
 stands by his father, Charles,
 a Civil War veteran.

“You need to meet Bill,” he said.

“Bill” is William Pool, 99, a World War II veteran of the Battle of the Bulge and reportedly the son of a Civil War veteran. He sat in a wheelchair, mostly enjoying the attention from festival attendees, some of whom got his autograph. He’ll turn 100 in January.

Bill’s father, Charles Parker Pool — born in 1844 — served with the Sixth West Virginia during the Civil War. Now math was never my strong suit while attending Julia Ward Howe Elementary in suburban Pittsburgh, but I think that would make Charles 80 when Bill was born.

While she attended grade school, Bill’s daughter, Carolyn, delighted telling the teacher of her grandfather’s Civil War service.

“And the teacher would go, ‘Now honey. There is no way that your grandfather served in the Civil War,’ “ she recently told a reporter. “And I tried to tell them, ‘Yes, he did.’”

The "only son of a Civil War soldier still alive," reads the headline on that story.

Of course, I subscribe to this old journalism maxim: “If your mother tells you she loves you, get another source.” So I must do more digging on this story. 

In the meantime, READ MORE.