Twenty nine STFB members and their guests met at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Franklin on November 17 for the STFB Annual Meeting and dinner. After dinner, STFB President Mike
Walker called the business meeting to order and quickly stepped through the program which reviewed the STFB activities for the year and then elected Sam Gant, Bobby Hargrove and Dan
Mora to three-year terms on the STFB Board.

A highlight of the evening was the presentation of the STFB annual Tenny Pinkerton Dosier award to Franklin Alderman Mike Skinner for his ongoing advocacy and shepherding of the loop road project for the Eastern Flank Battlefield Park. The project is complicated and expensive and for many good reasons could have easily morphed into a less than-a-loop road project. Mike worked with the Streets and Parks Departments as well as the Franklin Planning Department to find ways to fund the loop road as originally envisioned.

Lee Ann Newton of Murfreesboro was our program speaker and presented the memoirs of Erastus Winters, 50th OVI that she had found in her hometown of Liberty, Indiana. Erastus had survived the battles at Perryville, the Atlanta campaign, and was overrun and captured on the south side of the Carter farm office on November 30, 1864. He then survived the Cahaba prison and the April 1865 Sultana steamboat explosion that killed ¾ of the released Federal prisoners on board. Using his many war-time letters home to his family and friends, Erastus wrote and self-published the book in small quantities for his buddies and their families, but the book was doomed to obscurity. Lee Ann recognized the book’s importance and republished it so that Erastus’ story will not be lost. Lee Ann signed ten books for guests.

As her first passion, Lee Ann has organized a nonprofit Operation Christmas Care group that from 2006 through 2010 has sent 46,000 Christmas cards to our Wounded Warriors in military hospitals. See her web site at www.unclesamsheroes.com for additional details on her veteran support projects. The Erastus Winters book can be ordered at the web site or at amazon.com