Donald Richard Lauter, Rest In Peace

Monday I learned that my friend and fellow student of the Petersburg Siege died last March.  I had thought that might be the situation when my emails to him met with no response.  I searched the internet for an obituary but found none.  My Christmas card to Don prompted the lawyer handling his estate to write me a note.

Don was 77 when he died, about four years older than I.  He was a veteran, having served in the 101st Airborne Division.  He had been hospitalized intermittently with a heart problem for a few years before he died.  

I met Don at Petersburg National Battlefield Park in December 2015. I gave a little talk there after Christmas about my first book, republished by Savas Beatie that year as The Siege of Petersburg:  The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864.  After the talk Don introduced himself and led me out to his pickup truck, where he showed me a plaster wall and some bullets he had salvaged.

Arabella Barlow (findagrave.com)

Don was somewhat of a legend.  I had heard of him for years but it was only as I worked on my current book, Lee Besieged:  Grant's Second Petersburg Offensive, June 18-July 1, 1864, that I got to know him.  He was a researcher, an author, and an archaeologist, who was very unselfish with his knowledge.  As my book proceeded, he shared with me his research on maps of the area where the Federals and Confederates clashed during the period covered by my book; he sent me copies of articles he had written about Arabella Barlow, the wife of Brig. Gen. Francis Barlow, who figures prominently in Lee Besieged, and about the famous painter Winslow Homer, a friend and aide-de-camp to Frank Barlow; and he showed me the results of his battlefield digging, especially a Mississippi button that helped me place Harris' Mississippi Brigade on June 22, 1864, my book's critical day.

Prisoners from the Front (1866) Winslow Homer (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 

This picture depicts General Barlow confonting prisoners after the fight of June 21, 1864.  Homer reportedly posed the head of the scrawny Barlow on the more robust body of his subordinate, Brig. Gen. Nelson Miles

He gave me more bullets, too.  I didn't check the most recent batch carefully enough.  It contained a live round from 1864 (probably) or 1865 and of course the Transportation Safety Agency confiscated it from me as I boarded a plane for home at Richmond airport.

Ave atque vale, Don!  Hail and farewell!