FORT MITCHELL, Ky. — A crisply folded American flag on Saturday connected through the ages the memory of U.S. Army soldier John F. Rowalt to his living descendants — 148 years after his death.
“On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Army and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”
With those words from a uniformed American soldier to Lexington resident Fran Dankovic, the grave of the Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, unmarked since his death in 1875, will forever be hallowed military ground.
It was a presentation at the Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Ky., that Dankovic and her husband, Rick, never could have imagined until a few months ago.
photo gallery from ceremony n kentucky
Dankovic said she had no idea she was related to an American military hero until she was contacted by Ray Johnston, of Toledo.
Johnston called to tell Dankovic of her familial connection to Rowalt, who earned his CMOH in 1869 while fighting with Company L of the 8th U.S. Army Cavalry Regiment in the Arizona territory.
In a fight on Oct. 14 in Lynx Creek, likely during the Apache Wars, Rowalt distinguished himself, earning the Congressional Medal of Honor for “gallantry in action with Indians,” according to the award’s citation.
Historical records sdhow troops including Rowalt’s Company L on that date “pursued a band of Indians, pressing them so close as to cause them to abandon all their camp equipment, which was afterwards destroyed.”
It must have been a fierce battle. Two other privates in Company L — David Goodman from Massachusetts and John Raerick from Cincinnati — also earned Medals of Honor for their bravery that day.
Rowalt received his Medal of Honor on March 3, 1870.
He earned his award while serving as a private, though he rose to the rank of sergeant by the time he left the Army in 1873 and moved to Cincinnati to live with his brother.
Sadly, Rowalt contracted smallpox and died in 1875. He died in a “pest house” and his belongings were burned due to the highly communicable disease. He was buried in the rolling hills of the Fort Mitchell cemetery that had opened just six years earlier.
His grave had no headstone — until now.
Richland Source learned of Rowalt when it did a series of stories on eight Congressional Medal of Honor recipients from Richland County.
Johnston and fellow researcher Karl Jensen, of Hackettstown, N.J., working on behalf of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, helped to convince the U.S. Veterans Association that the man buried in the unmarked grave was the same soldier who earned the nation’s highest award for military valor.
That approval for a Medal of Honor headstone came late this summer and set up the ceremony.
“He is either a great-great-great uncle or a great-great-great-great uncle,” said Dankovic, whose maiden name was Rowalt. “We’re not sure and haven’t gotten to that point to try to figure it all out.”
The couple made the three-hour drive to the cemetery just south of Cincinnati for the ceremony that included full military honors by the Kentucky Army National Guard and Erlanger/Elsmere American Legion/VFW Honor Guards.
Included was a 21-gun salute, the flag presentation and the playing of Taps by 84-year-old Kenton County Sheriff Charles “Chuck” Korzenborn, a military veteran and a member of the Kentucky Veterans Hall of Fame.
Johnson contacted Dankovic by phone in her office, where she works for the Village of Lexington. She was speechless.
“I was just … I mean … I didn’t even know what to say,” she said. “I mean, how do you find somebody (so many years later). He said he found me through an obituary when my father died.
“That’s how he got my name and somehow he found out I worked for the village,” Dankovic said with a laugh.
“I couldn’t miss this (ceremony). This is amazing,” she said, words echoed by her husband.
“It’s just amazing that you find somebody that you didn’t really know you had,” Rick Dankovic said. “(The ceremony) was just something we wouldn’t miss.”
The effort to honor Rowalt began in 2011 when U.S. Air Force veteran Rob Schultz from nearby Covington, Ky., was working on family genealogy research.
“I came upon a request for someone to check and see if the John Rowalt buried at Highland Cemetery was the CMOH recipient. As a veteran, I found it unacceptable that a hero of this caliber had been forgotten,” Schultz told Richland Source last week.
Schultz, 59, who spoke at Saturday’s ceremony, forwarded his research to Johnston and Jensen, who pushed the information successfully through to the VA.
“This was a labor of love. I’m a veteran myself and I just found it just unthinkable that a veteran, a Medal of Honor recipient, was lying here, forgotten about.
“I feel that we’ve done him justice here today. I deeply appreciate everybody’s contribution to this. This makes it so much better,” Schultz said.
Ken Estep, executive director of the Richland County Veteran Service Commission, attended the event, joined by fellow commission member Larry Corn.
“I wanted to pay my respect to Sgt. Rowalt,” Estep said. “This is long overdue … 148 years without a headstone. It’s my honor to be here.”
The fact Veterans Day is just a week away made the event even more poignant for Estep and Corn, who delivered the closing prayer at the event.
“The sad part of this is that the appreciation of history somehow is not what it used to be,” Estep said.
“Even in our schools, we’re not teaching our children to pay respect to the people before us that donated their lives in order for us to still be free. This gentleman didn’t die in the service of our country, but he served this country proudly,” Estep said.
In his closing prayer, Corn thanked God for soldiers like Rowalt.
“We come today to pay tribute and honor — years and years after it was deserved to be given. We thank you Almighty God for the country we live in, for your peace that passes all understanding. We pay honor and tribute today for our fallen comrade from years and years ago,” Corn said.
(Below are links to all of the stories Richland Source has published since July on U.S. Army Sgt. John Rowalt, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, which led up to Saturday’s ceremony.)