Editor's Note: K. Dennis Rucker Klepp is a Navy civilian and former chief advisor to the Maritime Administration who began his career in the federal government as a Coast Guard officer. He later served as a lawyer for the Transportation Security Administration and a senior adviser to the House Homeland Security Committee. Her views expressed in this comment are her own. Read more opinion pieces on CNN.
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Rucker Klepp Photos
K. Dennis Rucker Klepp
My family's Rucker surname is well known in some military circles and among many who consider themselves Confederate history buffs. The Rucker family has a multigenerational history of military service. They also have deep roots in America's shameful Confederate past. That includes my distant cousin, Colonel Edmund Rucker.
About 37 years ago, the United Daughters of the Confederacy named its chapter in Alabama after Colonel Rucker. But an even greater honor came for him again in 1942, when the U.S. Army named an Army base in Alabama after him. The base had the name Fort Rucker until a year ago this month, when the military stripped it of its name.
To be clear, I am not proud of my family's heritage or its history in one of the darkest chapters of America's past. I am also not ignorant of the fact that I share the Rucker name with many black Americans. Rucker and his relatives owned plantations throughout the South, including Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama.
There are even communities in Virginia and Georgia that bear the surname “Ruckersville.” When I meet a Black American named Rucker, I can't help but think that we are likely related, if not married. We are probably related by slavery.
A step towards justice and healing
Naming a military base or other military property after an ancestor is a big deal. It turns out that removing that name is no easy task. But when the names of Confederate soldiers like Edmund Rucker were removed from the base, it was a necessary step toward justice and healing.
The process to rename Fort Rucker began in 2020 amid protests that erupted in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing debate over racism. Congress included a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021 that would create a commission tasked with recommending new names or removing Confederate names for military assets. Former President Donald Trump vetoed the bill, but the changes had overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers, and Congress voted to ignore the bill.
George M. Cruikshank/Wikimedia Commons
Edmund Winchester Rucker, former Confederate officer, Birmingham, Alabama, 1920
The military assigned a liaison to help the committee identify properties named after Confederates, and I was asked to be the Navy liaison. I was excited to be a part of the process of removing my family's name from an Army base in Alabama. And instead of fighting to preserve the Union, there are other descendants of Confederates who supported renaming federal property after relatives who fought to break it up.
Until then, I had never told my superiors in the U.S. Navy about my family history. I did not share that I was part of the same family for which Fort Rucker was named. I didn't share that my great, great, great-grandfather Howell Cobb was president of the Extraordinary Confederate Congress and swore in Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederacy. I also did not share that Cobb had authorized the construction of the ship that conducted the first naval bombardment of the Civil War. I immediately told Navy leaders who I was and they told me I had a job to do. The next call was to the Army. They were providing administrative support to the naming committee. Rucker was trying to help them.
Prior to joining the Navy as a civilian, he served on active duty in the Coast Guard. Both my parents were military officers, so my military service was not unexpected, but my choice of military service was unexpected. My parents sometimes asked me why I didn't join the military like them. My answer was always the same. Because I didn't have to answer questions about my last name. Growing up as an Army brat, I was asked many times if I had anything to do with Fort Rucker. As a military member, I didn't have to answer the same questions.
But once the renaming process got underway, that anonymity ended. The creation of the naming committee led me to reexamine how my family's history, including the very name Rucker, has hurt others for centuries. I paid particular attention to the experiences of Black American military personnel.
I wondered: How did black servicemen feel about serving on bases named after Confederate names? What was it like to have to wear a shirt with the name of a man who supported slavery? And I wore a military shirt named after a man who fought against the Union Army and was instrumental in its conquest and enslavement. I have often asked myself how I felt about black Americans reciting the Pledge of Allegiance on base.
Shortly before the fort's name was changed, I published an essay expressing support for the change. I received a barrage of negative reactions on social media accusing me of being “woke,” or, in their view, turning my back on my family. Turn your back on your family? A family that owned hundreds of slaves and committed treason? Some say they were embarrassed by my failure to recognize the rare honor bestowed upon my family by having a military base named after a relative. Not many families name their federal facilities after themselves, so certainly I have to be proud of that designation. But honor is more than a word. There is no honor in taking up arms against this country.
The name change process lasted for months. During my term on the committee, my father, Army Col. T.W. Rucker, would occasionally ask how things were going with the name change. We talked about Col. Edmund Rucker and another relative, General Henry Louis Benning, for whom the Georgia Army base Fort Benning is named. His father expressed his pride and support for me to be a part of this process. My cousins ​​and sisters shared the same message – keep going, Denise.
My father told me many times that in other countries, men who committed treason were shot. But that didn't happen in my family. Grandpa Cobb's portrait hung in the U.S. Capitol until 2020, when it was removed. My great-grandfather Tinsley White Rucker served as a Confederate soldier and in his later years served as a member of the United States Congress. Another relative, Lucius Q.C. Lamar, became the first former Confederate to serve in the U.S. Senate in 1877. President Grover Cleveland nominated Lamar to be Secretary of the Interior in 1885, and Lamar became a Supreme Court justice in 1888. I lost my family war, but I never lost power.
Purchase Expansion/Getty Images
United States – circa 1864: The Battle of Nashville was a two-day battle in which the author's relative, Colonel E. W. Rucker, participated. This battle he fought at Nashville, Tennessee on December 15, 1864 and December 16, 1864, made him one of the greatest victories achieved by the Union Army in this war.
Of course, over the generations of military service in my family, some have served with honor. My father and his brother served in Vietnam. My uncle was shot and seriously injured, but he came back alive. More than 58,200 Americans reportedly did not do so, and their names are forever etched on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I associate this monument with my father's West Point reunion.
Each rally in Washington, D.C., included a wreath-laying ceremony in memory of the students who lost their lives. Some of the families and loved ones of those who were unable to return home also attended the reunion. Each time, I was poignantly reminded of how lucky I was to have my father in my life. My father came to my college graduation and wedding.
I was reminded of those reunions when I learned that Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael Joseph Novosel Sr. had been selected. That name was to be replaced by the name of my ancestor at Fort Rucker. Novosel served in his three wars: World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam. He risked his life to save others.
Novocel flew 2,543 missions in Vietnam and assisted in the evacuation of more than 5,500 wounded people. Thanks to him, his father, brothers, uncles and sons are back. They lived through major milestones in their families' lives. I can't think of a better hero to replace my cousin who betrayed this country.
Kelly Morris/U.S. Army
New Fort Novosel sign for April 2023.
Millions of American men and women serve or have already served in the military. More people will serve in the future. Each service member raises their hand and pledges allegiance to the United States. It is right and correct that the Federal bases and the ships that serve them are named in honor of American heroes like Novosel, rather than in honor of traitors to our country.
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I still sometimes receive backlash for my decision to participate in the process of righting a historical wrong by honoring the military service of a deserving man. I recently attended a history conference and was criticized for supporting a naming committee. One attendee criticized the decision to remove honorable historic Confederate names from monuments. I countered that the name was not honorable, but he disagreed. I then volunteered that I was a Rucker and supported the change. Then he stopped speaking.
I did not attend the renaming ceremony from Fort Rucker to Fort Novosel last April. At the time I was thousands of miles away visiting family in Wales. I found a dry spot at Caernarfon Castle and watched the ceremony on my phone. Most people associate the Welsh destination as the site of the investiture of the then Prince of Wales. For me, it came to symbolize something else: a new page in American history, and the end of a chapter in my own family's dark story.
