Tyler Wilson Doyle Wfxb

My father, Peter Doyle, is 95 years old and is an art collector, owning a great many paintings by famous celebrities and is still getting ready for the Easter Sunrise Reception for the White House Easter Egg Roll.

This summer, I was asked by fellow artist Zuzana Kožulová to join her group of students for this re-enactment of the May 1865 Easter Sunrise Ceremony for the White House.

I wasn’t at all interested in participating in White House events (since I’ve been invited to do them several times throughout my life), but I am completely committed to participating in the re-enactment.

In May 1865, a group of newly arrived American soldiers arrived at Fort Washington, Maryland, where they were greeted by the governor, William F. Hooker, in his home along the Potomac River. Hooker asked the Americans what they would do once they were there. The soldiers told him to retrieve their stock of food, and he left without saying a thing.

That was the day when at exactly in exactly that moment—southeast of Washington, DC—fifty thousand American soldiers marched towards the gravesite of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and laid the casket of Jesus.

That’s right; fifty thousand men laid their crosses on Jesus’ grave, and as one of the soldiers from the line, Private Jesse R. Wheatley, said to Hooker, “Colonel, we are brothers, and he was our brother, and we will be thy brother’s.” So how was it in the first moments of the event that his brother was wounded by a landlady’s piece of lead pipe? How did this wounded brother receive this great great spiritual savior on Easter Day morning, the burial of the disciples along with Jesus in Jesus’ own backyard?

Now, this is a question for the heart—we are called to love our enemies and to pray for those who attack us! But, right when the last soldier’s back was turned and his life was saved, a sergeant of the Confederate army, a man named John Brown, pulled out a gun from his holster, and shot a soldier named Green who was seated beside him.