Lifelong Yadkin County resident Andrew Mackie has been involved with the Yadkin County Historical Society for 33 years.
A former public school teacher, Mackie loves history.
Mackie says that it was his grandmother that got him interested in history when they started to put together a family history.
“I used to tell people, ‘If it’s old, I’m interested in it!’” Mackie said.
He is now president of the Yadkin County Historical Society.
Ten years ago, the historical society started compiling a list of all the Yadkin County veterans from World War II. Mackie said that the project was initiated by Peggy Steelman Long of Hamptonville, who was vice president of the historical society at the time. The project grew from veterans of World War II and will now include veterans from all wars – beginning from the conflicts that Native Americans were involved in to the present day War on Terror in the Middle East.
The list will be fairly comprehensive, and Mackie hopes to include the following information about each veteran: date of birth, date of death, where they are buried, what branch of the military and what rank they were, and which war or conflict the veteran served in. Mackie also would like to get some stories from the veterans.
A big motivation for creating this list is the fact that, according to Mackie, the service records of veterans are closed to the public and special permission is required to view the records. As such, the historical society is compiling the list purely by networking – finding a veteran who will tell them about another veteran, and so forth.
For example, the historical society set up at some picnic tables at the Jonesville Jubilee on May 5 looking for veterans to leaf through their lists and make sure their names or names of other veterans they know were on the list.
“This is an important time in our county’s history because the interest in veterans is high and we want to take advantage of that opportunity,” Mackie said.
If you are a veteran from Yadkin County or have any information about veterans in Yadkin County, please contact the president of the Yadkin County Historical Society, Andrew Mackie, at 336-428-8471 or andrewmackie@yadtel.net.
Reach Tara E. Moore at 835-1513 or tmoore@heartlandpublications.com.
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