Albert Miller Lea should be honored in home state
The professor and West Point graduate who organized an infantry company, making the military program at the University of Tennessee among the first in the U.S., was not Albert Lea Miller ("Haslam II among ROTC Hall inductees," Nov. 3), but Albert Miller Lea. Perhaps the most nationally famous native son of Grainger County, Tenn., Lea (1808-1891) was a solder, engineer, surveyor and topographer.
It was after receiving a master's degree in engineering from East Tennessee University (later the University of Tennessee) that Lea joined the faculty as an instructor and began the military program there in 1844. His remarkable career also included serving as chief engineer for the state of Tennessee, federal surveyor of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, determining the Iowa-Missouri boundary for the federal government, assistant engineer on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, brigadier general in the Iowa militia, chief clerk for the U.S. War Department and city engineer for Knoxville. The city of Albert Lea, Minn., and its nearby lake are named for him.
Lea moved to Texas in the 1850s and when the Civil War broke out, he joined the Confederate States Army as an engineering officer. He and his son, Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lea, a Naval Academy graduate, were on opposing sides during the Battle of Galveston. After the battle, Maj. Albert Miller Lea boarded Edward's captured ship and found his son mortally wounded. Edward's poignant last words, "My father is here," are engraved on his tombstone. Following Edward's death, Maj. Lea was given authorization to hold a funeral for both Union and Confederate personnel killed in the battle.
After the war, Albert Miller Lea remained in Galveston for several years, then moved to Corsicana, Texas, where he is buried. This exceptional Tennessean should be as honored and well-remembered in his home state as he is in Texas, Minnesota and elsewhere.
Stevvi Cook, Bean Station