Veterans Park in Saint Cloud, FL

From time to time I do get outside of my apartment on an off day and do some urban exploring. This time it was mostly because of an app I use called Ingress. I will write more about this app (and all the other ones I use) at a later time, but it is basically a GPS based, live action version of the game Risk. So anyway, I wanted to accomplish something today and one of the missions in Ingress involves Veterans Park in Saint Cloud.

I have had a few excursions before that were relaxing, weird, or just flat out disappointing. This time though, I got more than I bargained for.

For starters, I thought that this was your average veterans park because it had military vehicles and such. Even a helicopter:

However, once I got to looking around a little bit more I found some very interesting things.

Apparently someone realized "damn, it sure seems to rain a lot in central Florida during the summer. We should do a study..." And they did. The part that got me was this was in 1946 and part of the group conducting it was NACA (No, not NASA...there was no NASA yet). But the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics would become NASA. Yeah I had to look up what NACA stood for.

The real treasure of the whole park to me was a monument for the Sons of Confederate Veterans (1896). Now anytime I see civil war memorials it piques my interest. It has a base with the rebel flag emblem (Hell yeah! Heritage, not hate) and listed the officers on each side up above it.

To the left and right of the base underneath the list of names is a quote of last words before they died from two of the most renowned civil war generals. The first up is Gen. Robert E. Lee:

Now I had seen this one first and it didn't seem all that memorable until I realized it was his last words. Then I got to the other side and lo and behold there is not only my favorite confederate hero, but also my favorite quote of his! It was also dying words but this time of General Thomas J. Jackson. You may know him as "Stonewall":

Isn't that such a pleasant quote? He was suffering a very high fever at the time of his death, but he became very lucid and calm near the end, said this quote, and then quietly passed away. I have often thought that I would want this on my tombstone.

This made my whole visit.

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