War gamer hones art

TICONDEROGA, N.Y. — Bob Bearor is no “Ramada Ranger.” In his dogged pursuit of life as an 18th-century soldier, the retired Troy firefighter has slept outside in subzero weather, been mistaken for a bum, swatted armies of insects and traversed more forest trails than a James Fenimore Cooper hero.

Mr. Bearor, 57, is a military re-enactor, but he is no average G.I. Joe playing soldier. He has been honored by his American and Canadian counterparts alike as one of the most knowledgeable and dedicated re-enactors in the French and Indian War genre.

“There’s nothing to compare to the Civil War. It encompassed the whole country,” Mr. Bearor, decked out in the garb of a French colonial officer, says in a Ticonderoga diner after a snowshoe outing on a frigid day in the eastern Adirondacks.

“The Revolutionary War made us Americans,” he says, “but the French and Indian War, I think, is more romantic and colorful.”

In the past 25 years, Mr. Bearor has helped organize and has participated in scores of French and Indian War re-enactments, including some of the biggest and most successful in the United States. He has written five books on the guerrilla war that emerged during the conflict, pitting French partisans and American Indian warriors against Maj. Robert Rogers and his Rangers, an elite force of American frontiersmen attached to the British army.

With Holly, his wife of 34 years, Mr. Bearor has traveled from Illinois to Quebec to give lectures on an often-overlooked war whose outcome shaped America’s future.

“It gives credence to what you’re writing about and talking about,” Mr. Bearor says of his extreme exploits. “When you actually go out and do it, well, it’s a different ball game.”

Mr. Bearor also is known for his willingness to share his expertise with the general public as well as with employees at historic sites, says Bob Emerson, executive director of the Old Fort Niagara in Youngstown, N.Y.

“I’ve had people say about Bob Bearor that they’ve learned more from him in a few minutes of on-site interpretation than they learned studying history in all their years in school,” Mr. Emerson says.

While the nation’s Civil War re-enactors are believed to number in the tens of thousands, the largest French and Indian War re-enactments typically draw about 1,000 participants, Mr. Bearor says.

But those ranks could swell as the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War (1754-1763) is commemorated starting this year.

Numerous re-enactments and other events are planned this spring in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New England and Canada.

For the Bearors, that means plenty of trips away from their home in Newcomb in the Adirondacks. They will leave the hotel accommodations for the Ramada Rangers, a term hard-core re-enactors use for comrades who prefer clean sheets and indoor plumbing to sleeping in tents and cooking over an open fire.

The Bearors don’t begrudge those who opt for comfort. Many of the veteran re-enactors are in their 60s, and hauling camping equipment hundreds of miles for a weekend re-enactment isn’t always practical. But the Bearors have been doing it since their four children were youngsters.

Pitching a tent alongside other re-enactors was cheaper, more fun and more realistic.

“Yes, you sweat. You get dirty and grimy,” says Mrs. Bearor, who makes all the couple’s replica clothing. “But that’s how they felt” in the 18th century.

The Bearors have been re-enacting since the mid-1970s, when Mr. Bearor’s interest in hunting with muzzleloaders led him to Revolutionary War re-enactments organized for the nation’s bicentennial.

“After the bicentennial was over, everybody said, ’Hey, we don’t want to stop. That was a lot of fun,’” he says.

The logical next step was French and Indian War re-enacting, with its similar clothing, equipment and weaponry. Mr. Bearor already had a fascination with the era, thanks to fireside tales told by his father during boyhood hunting and camping trips.

“It was spellbinding for me,” says Mr. Bearor, a former Army paratrooper.

Mr. Bearor eventually took his hobby to the next level: trekking. He says only a small percentage of French and Indian War re-enactors are into trekking, which involves forays into the wilderness to re-create 18th-century military life.

On one such outing, the Bearors slept under a canvas tarp in the Adirondack woods on a night when the temperature hit 17 below zero.

“It was pretty rugged that night,” Mr. Bearor says matter-of-factly. “Trees were popping and cracking. It wasn’t conducive to a good night’s sleep.”

“It gave us a real appreciation of really how tough these people were,” Mrs. Bearor says.

Mr. Bearor’s fervor for the French and Indian War is as well-known north of the border as it is among his American colleagues. In 1990, the Bearors were afforded a rare honor: a viewing of the remains of the Marquis de Montcalm, the French general killed at the Battle of Quebec in 1759. The British victory in one of history’s most important battles gave England control of Canada.

Three years ago, the Bearors were invited back to Quebec for the reburial of Montcalm’s bones. Dressed in the uniforms of French colonial officers, they joined Canadian dignitaries, Montcalm’s descendants and other re-enactors as the general was reburied in an 18th-century cemetery.

Mr. Bearor remembers it as “absolutely overpowering.”

“Just being there, being involved in that part of history — what a rush,” he says.