SW035: Original Laumer’s Legionnaire of 1963 recalls 1988 Second Major Dade Commemorative March on Fort King Military Road

Making progress to Dade City (above) (Below) newspaper article with Frank Laumer, Chris Laumer and assorted marchers. 

[Editor's Note: This is the seventh in a series of podcasts over the coming weeks promoting the Seminole Wars Foundation's self-paced virtual challenge, The Major Dade Memorial March to Fort King that launches in just a few days, on Dec. 22. Registration to join Laumer's Legion is now open. Visit www.seminolewars.us for details.]

Our guest this week is one of the last remaining survivors of – well, not Maj. Dade’s march of 1835 from Tampa to Ocala – but of the first Laumer’s Legion, in 1963, that sought to retrace Dade march along a rediscovered Fort King Road. That group succeeded in reaching Bushnell and the Dade Battlefield Historical State Park, where Dade’s journey came to an abrupt halt from a Seminole ambush. The first Laumer’s Legion had no need to track it any further because Dade’s column was unable to trek it any further. Battle survivors had returned to Fort Brooke in Tampa rather than marched north to Fort King, which was a shorter distance but had unknown composition of Seminole who would oppose any passage through.

Chris Laumer was 12 years old in 1963. He walked one long, full day with his father, Frank Laumer, family friend William Goza, and several other interested impresarios eager to blaze the pathway anew. Twenty-five years later, his father decided to try it again, this time attired as a blue-sky uniformed 1835-era Soldier, one who would march himself, ford rivers himself, and camp overnight himself to gauge a Soldier's life moving through hostile Indian country, as we term it today. This time, Chris chose to accompany his father – with a legion of historical hobbyists – for the full five-day walking journey.

In this episode, Chris shares insights on the difference between the two marchers as he perceived them, whether he thought the marches were a good idea, and what he gleaned from them about the arduous nature of a Soldier’s life back then and how alien it appears to us today. Chris and I shared narration duties of William Goza’s 1963 book on that pathbreaking march for an earlier episode of this podcast.

(Above) Crawling under property owner's fences did not appeal to Chris Laumer. (Below) Emerging from swamps, the Legion enters Zephyrhills city streeet.

Chris Laumer then (1988) and now (2020)

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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