FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
State Rep. Harry Readshaw D-Allegheny www.pahouse.com/readshaw

Civil War Preservation Ball 2009 -- the 6^th successive success

HARRISBURG, April 13 – State Rep. Harry Readshaw, D-Allegheny, today announced that the tabulations are in and it appears the annual Civil War Preservation Ball in the Pennsylvania Capitol Rotunda on March 29 was another victory for the preservation of the Commonwealth’s monuments on the Gettysburg Battlefield.

Approximately $3,500 will go to the Endowment Trust Fund to ensure that funds are always on hand to clean and maintain for many generations to come the more than 140 monuments and regimental position markers that memorialize the valor of the thousands of Pennsylvania volunteers who turned the tide of the surging Confederacy in July 1863.

The sixth annual edition of the ball was dedicated to the late Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll who customarily had led the opening grant march at past balls.

Organized by the Victorian Dance Ensemble of the Civil War Dance Foundation, the event‘s proceeds go to the Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monuments Project for the perpetual maintenance of the more than 140 battlefield monuments and regimental position markers that honor the Commonwealth volunteers who fought in the titanic 1863 battle.

Two years ago, funding from the ball paid for repairs to a Pennsylvania monument that had been toppled by vandals and seed money of $1,000 each to help restore two monuments from New York and Massachusetts that had been even more severely damaged. Work on the Pennsylvania statue was completed within months, but the other two monuments remain to be restored.

"Each year, this ball has steadily helped us to increase the number of monuments that we can guarantee will be as imposing in another hundred years as they are today," said Readshaw, Monuments Project founder. "Valor in the defense of the nation is certainly as important today as it was 146 years ago and the ’Icons of Freedom’ at Gettysburg remind us of that the freedoms that we enjoy and defend today were preserved by a previous generation of Pennsylvanians on our state’s soil."

Music for the ball was again provided by the Philadelphia Brigade Band, formerly the 28^th Pennsylvania Regimental Brass Band.

More information about the Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monuments Project can be obtained by calling Readshaw's Harrisburg office at 717-783-0411 or by e-mail at gettysburg@pahouse.net.