Stephanie Mackowski bounds into the room with a pink cloth bag.
The girl, dressed in a khaki shirt and baseball hat, stops at a
chair and pulls out some of her treasures – a Civil War cannon
ball, two railroad spikes, a Confederate flag. Under her arm is a
picture of Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

Jackson, who died about 130 years before Stephanie was even
born, has been the subject of the 12-year-old’s fascination for
about seven years.

As Stephanie tells it, clad in her Fredericksburg &
Spotsylvania National Military Park uniform, it started when her
family was visiting Manassas, Va., on their way to a McDonald’s.
They stopped by a Stonewall Jackson monument.

“There’s this big, huge guy … there on a big, huge horse,”
Stephanie, a resident of Limestone, N.Y., says as her eyes get
wider.

“(He) was a huge, great guy,” she says as her father, Chris
Mackowski explains that Jackson wasn’t huge in stature.

“He was superman,” the girl says, going into her tour guide mode
by saying there’s marks on the statute where it’s been hit by
lightning.

That chance side trip sparked a young Yankee girl’s enchantment
with a Confederate general.

“He did what he wanted; he didn’t give up,” Stephanie says.
Besides, he almost had the same hair color as her, she notes. “I
wanted to know him.”

Now, Stephanie gets to share her knowledge of Jackson by
volunteering at the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National
Military Park in Virginia.

Last summer, she and her father went through orientation and
started volunteering, Stephanie at Fredericksburg &
Spotsylvania and her father at Chancellorsville.

Stephanie is believed to be the youngest person to work in the
entire National Park Service; she started when she was 11.

One of Stephanie’s early encounters at the park was a memorable
one.

It started one day as historians Frank O’Reilly and Keith
Alexander were at the “Stonewall” Jackson Shrine – the location of
his death. Alexander, a gruff former U.S. Marine, would try to
connect with the children by asking them a simple question, what
did they have in common with Jackson?

Stephanie’s response took the man by surprise.

“We have the same color eyes, blue,” she replied.

“Of course she was right, but this Marine didn’t know what to do
with it,” O’Reilly remembers. Before he could regroup, she also
said that both she and Jackson had been to Niagara Falls.

“She really captured the imagination of both me and
(Alexander),” O’Reilly says, adding that the answer is that they
are listening to the same sound – the ticking of the clock –
Jackson heard.

“It almost defies the odds to find someone like Stephanie …
there’s not another person like Stephanie,” O’Reilly said.

While visitors are sometimes questioning what a girl – a sixth
grader at Allegany-Limestone (N.Y.) Middle School, can teach them
about a Confederal general, Stephanie usually wins them over.

“She does very, very well,” says Greg Mertz, the supervisory
historian, adding that her background in theater helps.

“That translates to what she does here,” Mertz says. “She’s very
articulate … she has knowledge not too many 12-year-olds have.”

Stephanie varies how she gives a tour.

“I always do it different,” she says of the tours. “Change the
information a little; change the way I talk.”

In the end, she has tourists eating out of her hand.

“Eventually, she wins them all off,” O’Reilly said. “She’s just
a natural, very open, very direct (person). Her excitement and
enthusiasm is infectious … she carries herself so well, it’s hard
to see her as a kid.”

Both Stephanie’s father and mother, Heidi Mackowski, are not
especially interested in history, but have been able to help foster
their daughter’s interest in Jackson.

This includes Stephanie’s father reading history books to “keep
up with her questions,” and even naming her little brother, now 6,
after Jackson.

Her parents gave her the reins to name her younger brother to
get her more involved in the event.

If she gets another horse, she says she will name him “Little
Sorrell” – the same name of Jackson’s horse.

For now, her horse’s name is Reilly, after O’Reilly, who
Stephanie refers to as her “best friend.”

“That blew me away,” O’Reilly says of having a horse named after
him. “It touched me … I’ve worked with members of Congress,
senators and governors and got lots of compliments. Nothing so
dramatic as to have a horse named after me.”

“She’s very special,” O’Reilly says. “I wouldn’t say I never met
anyone like her because she’s me. That’s what makes it all
exciting. We are kindred spirits.”

One of O’Reilly’s jobs is to fix the clock that was in the room
when Jackson died in 1863. Stephanie has been the only other person
he’s allowed to fix the clock.

“It’s extremely important to me to have someone there to
encourage … her excitement is exquisite.”

That excitement in such a young person, in turn, excites the
park officials.

“The future of the national parks rest on the next generation,”
Mertz said.

In the meantime, Stephanie doesn’t talk much about her interest
in Jackson to her friends at school, where she counts her consumer
science class as her favorite.

“I don’t really know why I like him, I just do,” says Stephanie,
who wants to be a veterinarian.

“Who could not like a face like this,” she adds, smiling while
she glances at his photo.