Archives director wins state award
By Staff
Jonathan Willis
Chris Ozbirn has labored for years to make the Franklin County Archives and Research Center what it is today.
She has helped countless people learn about their family's past and provided lasting memorials to others who might have otherwise been forgotten.
One group decided that it was time to do something for her.
Ozbirn was named the 2009 Emma Sansom Award winner by the Alabama Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The group officially named her as the award winner at a ceremony in Mobile last month, but she received the award Sunday during a celebration in Natural Bridge.
Ozbirn has been nominated for the award three times previously due to her work locating and placing markers on graves of Confederate veterans.
She has obtained 132 markers for Confederate veterans and of that number, she has personally placed 120 of them.
"I think all veterans need to be honored, not just Confederate soldiers, but the Civil War has always been a passion for me," Ozbirn said.
The task is never an easy one and requires a great deal of research. Ozbirn said that she generally looks at headstones in old cemeteries and goes from there.
"If there is a man who was born between 1820 and 1845, you can almost bet they were in the Civil War," she said.
After finding a name and birth and death date, Ozbirn researches the man's family to learn if he served during the war.
"Most all of these men left their homes to fight for their homes and families, it wasn't about slavery," Ozbirn said. "I just wonder, 'how can people let their ancestors lay here without letting people know what they did."
Her work finding these graves and placing markers in the honor of those men, is what led to her receiving the Emma Sansom Award.
"The way I look at it, I am at 132 and counting but I am not going to stop," she said. "I want to make sure that all of the Confederate soldiers from Franklin County get a monument."
One veteran who will soon receive a monument on his grave is William Merrell Smith, who is buried at Cherry Hill.
Two of Smith's grandchildren, Malcolm Smith, 92, and Bernice Glaze, 90, will get to see their grandfather honored after all these years.
"That's why I do this," Ozbirn said.
