Kinsley Leadership Center Opens at the Historic Spangler Farm & Field Hospital Site
Originally published February 2020 · p. 10
On Friday afternoon, October 4, the Gettysburg Foundation hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the Kinsley Leadership Center. It is housed in the renovated farmhouse of the George Spangler Farm & Field Hospital Site on Blacksmith Shop Road just behind the Union Line on Cemetery Ridge. Named in honor of the Foundation’s Chair Emeritus and his wife, Robert and Anne Kinsley, the Kinsley Leadership Center is the new home for the Foundation’s Executive Leadership Program, In the Footsteps of Leaders. Founded by Licensed Battlefield Guide Sue Boardman, the Program has been in existence for thirteen years and now, for the first time, has a permanent home, situated at one of the most important sites on the battlefield. The newly renovated farmhouse is part of an 80-acre property that represents one of the best preserved and significant Civil War field hospitals in existence. The farm and vicinity are largely undeveloped, with an unbroken 360-degree view of farmland and forest, providing visitors the opportunity to experience an intact 19th-century rural historic landscape. Built in the early 1800s, the farm served as a staging area for the Union Army of the Potomac Artillery Reserve and a Union field hospital. Now fully restored to its 1863 appearance, the Foundation uses the Spangler Farm & Field Hospital Site to tell the unique and compelling story of the role this farm played in the most significant battle of the Civil
Sue Boardman War from the perspective of more than 1,800 wounded soldiers from both sides who were treated at the farm and the surgeons and nurses who cared for them. As the headquarters for the Foundation’s Leadership Program, participants can become fully immersed in a Gettysburg experience from start to finish. The experiential program consists of guided tours of the battlefield studying command decisions and the dramatic and immediate consequences of those decisions from the places where those decisions were made. The Kinsley Leadership Center adds an additional layer of interpretation to the robust history already being offered by the Program. With its state-of-the-art classroom, the
Kinsley Leadership Center can now host debriefing sessions and team-building components at the Spangler Farm, offering an historic site to reflect on the leadership lessons of Gettysburg without modern intrusions. Eric Schultz, chairman of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, remarked, “This beautiful facility will provide new technology and innovative opportunities for education while enhancing the historic preservation efforts we all treasure.” Bob Kinsley shared that he and Anne were very excited to see the farmhouse project brought to completion and expressed the hope that visitors and groups studying leadership at the site “will understand its significance and ponder the agony of wounded and dying soldiers, the compassion of local women who cared for them, and the sacrifice of all who worked diligently.” The Gettysburg Foundation is looking forward to welcoming future participants to the Kinsley Leadership Center. For more information about the leadership center, Spangler Farm and other programming offered by the Gettysburg Foundation, visit www.GettysburgFoundation.org. Kinsley.
