In this instance, Grampa Bud was baiting the hook of my first fishing line to dip into the lake and the mouths of waiting bream as he told us of the Chestatee and Chattahoochee Rivers meeting to form what man had made into Lake Sidney Lanier (with an assist from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). Bud was finishing a lake cabin and dock of his own design and construction on a secluded cove at the northern end of Lake Lanier.
Our 'other' usual family vacation spot was Jekyll Island, which my grandparents, Mary and Bud Crane can also claim credit for introducing us to. And to access Jekyll, you crossed the Sidney Lanier Bridge along U.S. Highway 17, connecting Brunswick, Georgia and the mainland, along with a causeway to Jekyll Island. I was told, then and now, it is the longest bridge span in Georgia. Who was this fellow named Sidney Lanier?
Decades later the start of my own career would land me in Macon, Georgia, with well known CBS affiliate, WMAZ-TV 13, and Eyewitness News. And there again, the birth home and a museum named for famed musician, author and poet, Sidney Lanier. Lanier had been educated nearby in Milledgeville, then the location of Oglethorpe University. Sidney Lanier served during the Civil War as a Confederate private, in the Confederate Signal Corps, and in the tidewater region of Virginia. The ship on which he served was captured in 1864, and Lanier served as a prisoner of war at Point Lookout in Maryland. He contracted tuberculosis in the POW camp and suffered greatly from TB for the rest of his life.
After a time in Alabama near Montgomery, Lanier became a lawyer and returned home to Macon. Though well regarded, Lanier long struggled to support his wife and three children. Failed careers as a flutist and musician were supplanted by poetry he would write for magazines and periodicals of the day."The Marshes of Glynn" and "The Song of the Chattahoochee" are considered among his greatest works. Though he lived only 39 years, Lanier left us quite a legacy.
Self-taught to read and play music, Lanier aspired to play concerts with his flute. Though in demand and touring the nation, the flute was not the fiddle, and it was then also not quite a living. His poetry and other writings, which we would now view as a 'side hustle' were at times written with lyrics and music in mind, yet still primarily to pay the bills. Several of his poems were later set to music by others.
From 'The Marshes of Glynn"-
And the sea and the marsh are one.
How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night.
In more recent times, due to Lanier's brief stint in the Confederacy, there was talk, primarily emanating from Washington, D.C., of renaming the great lake, that bridge, schools and other honors paid to the poet and wordsmith. Lanier was not a general, nor an elected official, he was but a lowly private, called to duty and fighting on behalf of his family, for his homeland.
Thankfully, that prattle did not last long. The U.S. Army Corps announced in the spring of 2023, that it was pausing plans to rename Lake Lanier, as well as Buford Dam, both named for former Confederates. Buford was a Confederate Colonel and later President of the Railroad which led to creation of the town of Buford. I live in an area named Scottdale, named for another Confederate Colonel, George Washington Scott, who led one of the Confederacy's final victories in battle, saving Tallahassee, Florida from fall and capture...just one week prior to the Treaties of Appomattox.
I am grateful, as my own grandsons approach the age of their first fishing pole, or when we walk on the beaches of Georgia's Golden Isles, that I can still look forward to telling them of a man who lived less than 40 years, yet has Georgia's largest lake, longest bridge and much else named in his honor, despite rising from the humblest of circumstances.
