I grew up in Texas but my high school honors a Union hero. The street in front of the school was named after Alexander McCrae, a Union cavalry officer who died not far from El Paso defending Union artillery from a Confederate attack ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_McRae_(1829%E2%80%931862).

My high school thus named its teams the Eastwood Troopers, its yearbook was called Salute, its newspaper The Sabre, its literary magazine (which I edited) Reveille, and so on. The school even has a restored Civil War era cannon from the battle in which McCrae lost his life.

When I was actually in high school, I took all that for granted. But much later I realized how lucky I was that my school was not one of the many schools in Texas that in some way glorified or memorialized the Confederacy. McCrae himself was a southerner who chose to fight for

the Union. My school, in a southern state, made a choice for the Union as well, and for that I'm grateful.

Correction: I apologize for misspelling the officer's name: he was Alexander McRae.