BONUS: The Georgia Trust

Hey, guide sons, listeners.

I'm back with another bonus episode.

“This time, I'm sharing an interview with Ben Sutton”

from the Georgia Trust for historic preservation. Ben spent years working in a field that I've been thinking about a lot when it comes to the Georgia Guidestones. And that's preservation. Now that we've found the guidestones, or what's left of them,

I can't stop thinking about what should happen to them. Should they be donated to the Albertan Granite Museum, like Dutchy? Should they be put in a park somewhere? Should they even be saved at all?

I invited Ben to the AJC Newsroom to talk about how the Georgia Trust decides what deserves to get preserved, who gets to make the choice about what's worthy and what's not.

It turns out the answers are complex.

But this interview with Ben really helps to break it down. I tell people all the time, if you care about a place your preservationist, you don't need to go get a degree. You don't need to-- I mean, it's good to know the rules, quote

unquote, of preservation. But if you care about a place and you're taking care of a place, then you're a preservationist. If you are doing something to advance that tangible piece of history into the future, then you

are doing the work of preservation. Tell us a bit about the trust, what's the nature of the work and especially your role in it. Sure. So the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation

is the statewide nonprofit focused on the discipline

of Historic Preservation. The work of the trust is I'm really proud of. We've done some really unique projects around the state. So is there a certain number of years something has to be in existence to qualify?

That's a good question. So the rule of thumb for what is historic? Or what could be considered historic is 50 years.

“Something may seem incredibly important to us”

in our culture today. Something may have happened. An event may have happened three weeks ago that everybody is focused on right now. But that 50-year window allows historians,

allows the culture, allows folks tied to the site, potentially, to have that removal from sort of that immediacy. And I imagine a lot of the devils and the details of what is preservation worthy and what's not. What's your philosophy and the trust

approach to when places should be preserved and maybe when they actually should not be? The place where most people interact with the idea of historic preservation or the concept of it is a federal program called the National Register of Historic Places.

It's literally a federal law that sort of defines what the National Register is. And it's simplest form. It's really just a list of anything that's worthy of preservation. Anybody that's working in the preservation arena

is generally looking to that sort of criteria to determine whether or not something is historic as opposed to just old. And so when you're looking at the National Register of Criteria, you're looking at there has to be some level

of significance. It could be significant at the local level. It could be significant all the way up to a national level. But there has to be some sort of definition of significance. You're looking at authenticity.

And then there are criteria beyond that in terms of sort of what is it associated with? Is it an event? Is it a significant person in history? Is it a work of a master?

Like an artistic or architectural masterpiece? And then there's a unique one sort of on the end that looks at potential educational value. If we're interested in working on a site, we look at, is there some level of significance within those four

criteria? Does it still have physical integrity? Is there a rationale for its preservation? So when something gets preserved, let's say it's added

“to the National Register, what does that mean for that site?”

What sort of protections are afforded to it? Excellent question. It doesn't provide any direct protections to the site. So if it's a privately owned property, it's listed in the National Register.

There is nothing keeping it from being bulldozed tomorrow. That sounds like a common misconception, I guess. I don't think that is the number one misconception around historic preservation and the National Register. Absolutely.

But just getting listed on the National Register provides no protection.

that the trust has worked on, or you've worked on,

that became sort of a magnet for some of the, I don't know, cultural wars or politics have been sort of controversy in any way.

“So I think any time you're dealing with history,”

telling history, recognizing history, there's politics and conflict, just sort of inherent, if you're talking about an accurate reflection of history. And so yeah, there are some sort of generally speaking, there are sites tied to really important parts

of Georgia's history, that if you're talking about the authentic history of that site, you're engaging in some really difficult conversations, right, sites of enslavement. So when you talk about authentic history,

you are having to grapple with those challenging conversations.

- Where do things like monuments sit within the preservation landscape, especially ones that we're built, let's say decades after whatever they're commemorating? - Yeah, if you're working in preservation, particularly in the south, you are engaging with history

in a couple of different phases, right? You might be dealing with a specific battleground that is tied directly to the Civil War. You might be at a place like Oakland Cemetery where there are true monuments to the Confederate dead

that were put up within a handful of years of the war where people with those direct connections to the lost were looking to commemorate them and their lives. As you get further into the late 19th and early 20th century,

“you have to understand sort of the cultural and political efforts”

that were around shaping the history of the Civil War and that frequently gets framed as the lost cause movement. In modern-day preservation, it's really important to look at monuments and things like that.

Understand their authentic history, why were they put up, when were they put up? And what were they actually trying to convey? And so understanding the context of that message

is really critical when you determine

what's worthy of preservation to sort of go back to that fundamental question. - How do you feel about taking monuments down? - Professionally, we take a pretty maximalist approach and if it's worthy of preservation,

we think it should be preserved. That doesn't mean it needs to be venerated, doesn't mean that you just leave it out of context.

“But I think there needs to be some caution around the idea”

that we should just erase something, right? If it's contextualized, if you understand sort of the undertones or underlying politics and culture of what shaped those sites of commemoration, then you can still acknowledge them

for they tell a part of the authentic history, even though the original effort may have been inauthentic. From that perspective, taking the longer view, being able to contextualize and understand and advocate for something to be preserved

is important. - Interesting. I want to talk a bit about the Georgia Guidestones. Let's assume they're still standing. - Sure.

- At their site, would something like the Guidestones get those criteria? So it would be a challenge, but I think somebody could make the argument. This is where it gets tricky.

I think you would need to be looking at who put them up. You would need to be looking at who actually manufactured them, do they have some sort of level of artistic significance? Are they the work of a master? Are they locally significant?

Are they significant at a statewide level level? All of that would need to get answered. - I do think you'd probably be looking at the level of architectural or artistic significance. - Well, I think we're good on the artistry.

- Okay. - I mean, the number of artisans and craftsmen that worked on it were significant. But now we have that a challenge of the fact that they are no longer standing.

So could the site itself, the part of land, be a candidate for some kind of preservation? - I don't think so. I think without that sort of integrity of the site, and again, the monument is the significance, right?

And so without that, or even sort of a remnant of it,

loses why it would be significant. And from a preservation perspective, having that tangible link, that physical space that you can be directly engaging with

is the critical part of our discipline.

I always advocate for things to be saved. And again, preservation does not necessarily have to equate with reverence. It's important to sort of understand, again, just context, right?

Like, if you are only looking at the guidestones from their ability to convey some art at a high level of artistic value, and you were ignoring or not even sort of contemplating sort of why they are there, what sort of potentially

unsavory efforts were behind them, then you're missing the whole picture. And the whole picture is what you need to get the most value out of preserving something.

Understanding context, maybe moving it to a different place

where it's not in a venerated site, is important to its preservation. But being able to see that monument, see the artistic effort that went into it, understanding the actual history of why people

went to the effort of paying for that monument, is an important part of understanding it. - Last thing I was kind of curious about is what you do, what the preservation movement does about like, vandals to be honest or people who intend to

who just don't agree with something being preserved and want to destroy it, yeah, which is essentially, we believe what happened in the case of the guidestones, someone wanted them down and just in the cut onto the cover of night

and blew them up.

“- I think that if you're advocating for something”

to be preserved, again, you don't necessarily have to venerate it, but you are advocating for it to be protected not to be defaced. So somebody coming in with a bottle of spray paint to a confederate cemetery.

That's anti-preservation, right? You might be making a political statement in your day, but you are impacting in a negative way, the context for everyone else. And just from a basic level of preservation,

if you're vandalizing something, you are damaging it, right? Like you are hurting that thing and you are making it less likely to last into the future, whether it's a rock through a window, whether it's a TNT, I guess.

It's just antithetical to the preservation movement. Even if you disagree with why someone is preserving something, you don't go out and destroy it. - Yeah, yeah, it also strikes me that the preservation movement is really asking people

to not be so short-sighted, not be so selfish. - Yes, the really genius thing about preservation and the national register in particular

“is that it allows different levels of significance, right?”

So it doesn't have to be significant to the entire country to be worthy of listing or worthy of preservation. It can be important to Elberton, but a lot of these going back to that idea of sort of local significance,

like if there's a monument sitting out in front of somebody's courthouse, maybe that is a local issue, right? If the citizens there want to remove it, then is that worthy of a fight to save it? Some people certainly think it is.

There have almost always been a fight

around what gets saved, what gets removed, especially since 2020. But I think preservation as a whole sort of as a discipline is big enough to fit all of those folks under one tent, right? Like, if you are a civil war buff

and you are focused on the great battlefields that have been preserved in Georgia, and that's what you want to focus on, there's room for you as a preservationist. If you are a fan of modern architecture

and you want to focus on mid-century architecture and not think about anything else,

“there's room for you in the preservation movement, right?”

Good preservationists recognize the value and saving all of it. By the end of my conversation with Ben, I was still conflicted about whether the Georgia guide stones should be preserved or not.

The stones definitely tick several boxes, significance, both local and national, authenticity,

But given everything we learned

“about the guide stones creator, RC Christian,”

and his beliefs, it was still hard for me to make the case, to spend time and money to preserve the stones. Part of me thinks they should be donated to the Albertan Granite Museum, just like old Dutchy. I was sure though that given everything I learned

about what the guide stones really meant,

it would be wrong to just put them back up, exactly how they were. As Ben told me, preserving something, doesn't mean it should be venerated.

“So if someone were to take what's left of the guide stones”

from Alton Mercer's property, dust them off

and preserve them in some way, it should be done thoughtfully

and with the proper context for future generations. There could be a plaque alongside what's left of the stones, also a made of granite, of course. That provides as much of the full story behind the guide stones' birth and death as possible.

“The plaque might say something like this.”

On March 22nd, 1980, the Georgia guides stones were unveiled in Albert County, Georgia. They were designed and funded by RC Christian, a pseudonym used by a man from Iowa, whose real name was Herbert Kirsten.

Herbert Kirsten believed in racist pseudoscience, eugenics, and supported David Duke, the Klansman, for President of the United States. Local quarrymen and other craftsmen, including Charlie Klamp and his son Mark Klamp,

carved every letter by hand. In the early morning hours of July 6th, 2022, someone placed a large amount of tannerade at the foot of one of the stones and blew it up. Shortly after, the county government knocked down the rest.

During their 42 year life, a life book ended by mysteries. The Georgia guides stones were the target of conspiracy theories and suspicion from many groups. But they were also celebrated as a work of art, a significant granite monument,

created by skilled artisans from the community of Albert and Georgia.