From: "oldsouthrebel@zebra.net"
Date: May 6, 2009

Y’all, please read below my report to the Alabama Division UDC rootsweb this morning….
 
You folks in Georgia can be proud of Billy Bearden.  His remarks were very heart-touching and inspirational…for those of you who don’t know, Billy’s father is a 3-war veteran (WWII, Korea, Viet Nam) and is buried in Arlington Cemetery.  Your daddy and your ancestors smiled on you last night!
 
Billy, thank you sooo much for coming last night…you are a Southern treasure.  Thanks also to Elijah Coleman and his son Rhett for being there to give support to this Alabama situation that obviously nothing is going to be done do this thug!!!
 
Confederately yours,
Pat Godwin
 
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Ladies, yes, I am going to give y’all the bloody truth about last night!!!
 
The auditorium was just about filled to the gills with SCV members…some even from GEORGIA and TALLAHASSEE FLORIDA!!!!….VERY FEW UDC ladies were there…Mary Rudd was there from the Admiral Semmes Chapter and read a short letter written by Mary Potts.  Mrs. Rudd will have to tell you if those other few ladies were in her chapter as I am not familiar with all the members in that chapter…but there were very few ladies there.
 
What I DO know is that Mary Norman was not there…and from the DETAILED accounting that Dowdell gave, it would have been very advantageous for Mary Norman to have been there to clarify WHY SHE TOLD HIM SHE DID NOT KNOW WHO PUT THE FLAGS ON THE GRAVES…Dowdell, who is the classic "pimp daddy" but also purports himself to be a "bishop"….(and he had a few more "reverends" there to support him in his disparaging attacks on our heritage and our flags)…Dowdell said when Mary Norman told him she was in the cemetery taking inventory of the graves and did not know WHO put the flags on the graves, of course he turned into a drama queen and said from that he thought there must be gonna be a KLAN rally in the cemetery!!!!  If this is true, it makes me wonder why he was not told the flags were there in preparation for Confederate Memorial Day….that would have been VERY simple.  However, when Dowdell finished his more than 15 minute diatribe at the end of the meeting, the councilman for that ward that Pine Hill Cemetery is in spoke up & told Dowdell had he called HIM he would have told him WHO put the flags there and why!!!!  Dowdell said he called the mayor and Mayor Ham said "he knew of the ceremony but did not know about the flags."  Now, it was also stated out loud that the Auburn UDC chapter has been doing this for over 50 years….so WHY DID NOT EVERYBODY KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON IN THE CEMETERY????   
 
Dowdell even made a big "to do" about flags being in the cemetery that were old and faded…and that even WE were not respectful to our flags!  Believe me, he milked the "race card cow" til it was dry!  There were some very inspirational & profound remarks made by several SCV members….of course there was one "white trash" woman there who said she was from Los Angeles and all she talked about was the racism in Auburn, the South and all over….and that the flag was a racist symbol and did not have a place in the cemetery or anywhere…I wanted to go over to her after the meeting & tell her I would like to give her a fast track ticket back to Los Angeles!
 
Only ONE lady got up and talked about the covenants…she said she was disappointed in the non-responsiveness to this issue by the council and that the mayor had indicated in the newspaper that for consistency, the covenants should include all the cemeteries. This lady was retired military but a resident of Auburn….she expounded on FREE SPEECH and if the council was going to govern how these graves were to be decorated then she didn’t want to see an Auburn flag, Alabama flag, a Jewish star or U.S. flag on the graves!!!  SHE WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO ADDRESSED THE COVENANTS!!!!
 
How I feel about the lack of UDC interest and participation in last night’s forum is beyond description! It seems the ONLY people who can bring justice to this situation are the ladies of the Auburn chapter and until charges are filed against Dowdell, he has a carte blanche check to do as he pleases!  When Councilman Bob Norman ( no relation to Mary he told me) finished reading the RESOLUTION reprimanding Dowdell, Dowdell was defensive, belligerent and non remorseful about what he did!!!  By the end of the meeting, AFTER he had held up pictures of 1951 lynching of blacks…he even had a blown up pic of the German Swastika….IT INFURIATES ME when people associate our flag with that Nazi symbol…Dowdell finally got around to giving a back-handed apology to the Auburn UDC.
 
NOTHING will be done to Dowdell!!!  NOTHING has been done to protect Pine Hill Cemetery from future vandalism or even prohibition from future Memorials!!!!  The SCV answered the call ……the UDC has failed our soldiers who died fighting for liberty…this makes me think of Robert L. Dabney’s quote, "The question is not are we proud of our ancestors, but are THEY proud of us"!!!
 
I think I know the answer to that question….
 
Confederately yours,
Pat Godwin
Selma Chapter #53