Earlier Today the City of Amarillo quietly pulled down two statues at Ellwood Park. One of them the Doughboy statue was a tribute to World War I soldiers and will eventually find a new home at the Panhandle War Museum. but it's the second one that's causing more of a stir today...

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William A. Miller Falls

The second statue is William A. Miller. A confederate soldier and the namesake for the local chapter of the United Daughters of The Confederacy dates back to at least 1915 when the first talks of the monument were brought up. WW1 stalled out any work until 1926 and the statue was finally erected in 1931 to plenty of fanfare at the time.

Today however... it's a much different story.

The move comes at a time when everyone else is doing the same thing.

Sure enough there had been plenty of debate over the statues and its part of a trend across the nation to rewrite history. The last plan for Miller was to have him moved to Claude, Texas and the Sons of Confederate veterans wanted to see that happen. The City briefly made a statement on all of this:

“Today, two statues were removed from Ellwood Park in the City of Amarillo. These statues were placed there by various organizations who relocated them. The City remains grateful for the many years of display at Ellwood park, and for the generosity of the organizations that provided them to the City.”

Moving confederate statues isn't exactly new and Amarillo is a little late jumping on the bandwagon, and honestly I don't want to sit and debate on the ethics of a confederate memorial. My feelings are what they are and yours are yours, I know what the confederacy was. Most of us do. I know that when this statue was first put up only 4 surviving veterans were even around to see the dedication which shows that even at the time they were already kinda stretching for relevancy, especially since the big war that finished up was WW1. Does removing a statue fix history? No. Leaving it up doesn't make it right either, honestly people need to realize that. The events of 1861 -1865 still happened, with all the sentiments and actions before still happening. What it does do is polarize folks these days. It's a no win topic. people will argue their side until they're blue in the face.

You start hearing phrases like "Cancel Culture" or "Sterilizing History" and on the other side want it gone because of the very real pain that the statue represents. Again does this fix everything?

Not Really.

What's done is done, The statue is gone. What gets me is if this was paid for with private funds going up, Why am I paying a city crew to do all the dirty work here on something none of us paid for? Is someone going to reimburse tax payers for this?

I'd rather spend the money fixing potholes...