Facilities named in honor of Confederate soldier John Quincy Marr – including Oak Marr RECenter, Park and Golf Center – will be renamed, the Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA) Board has decided.
The facilities, which are located at 3200 Jermantown Road in Oakton, now will be named Oakmont RECenter, Park and Golf Center, FCPA officials announced Nov. 9.
Park Authority officials are in the process of changing all references to the facilities’ names in documentation, signage and on the agency’s Website where appropriate.
The facility name changes, including ones to physical signage, reservation systems and FCPA’s Website, will be phased in over the next couple of months, said agency spokesman Benjamin Boxer.
It will cost about $270,000 to change the LED road signage at the site’s entrance and signage and supplies for the RECenter and golf facility will run an additional $35,200, he said.
Marr was the first Confederate soldier killed in combat by a Union soldier in the Civil War during the Battle of Fairfax Courthouse, according to county officials. But local historian Jim Lewis disagreed.
“Marr was the first officer killed in combat on either side in the Civil War,” Lewis said. “He just happened to be a Confederate.”
The Daughters of the Confederacy in 1904 erected a monument at the courthouse to commemorate Marr’s death, FCPA officials said.
The Board of Supervisors in 2020 authorized the monument’s removal, along with some cannons at the site, which had been donated by the U.S. Army in 1910.
The Marr monument “does not reflect the values of our richly diverse community,” Supervisor Dalia Palchik (D-Providence) said at the time.
County officials moved the Marr monument to a county storage facility at a cost of $19,562 and agreed to transfer the obelisk’s title and possession to the nonprofit Stuart-Mosby Historical Society, which planned to install it on the grounds of the Stuart-Mosby Civil War Cavalry Museum in Centreville. That museum subsequently closed, Lewis said.
The elimination of Marr’s name from those Oakton facilities accords with the county’s recent trend of eliminating names and titles that represent the Confederacy, officials said.
Among changes implemented have been renaming Lee and JEB Stuart high schools as John Lewis and Justice high schools, respectively, and removing Robert E. Lee’s name from the former Lee and Lee-Jackson Memorial highways, now calling them just Routes 29 and 50.
Lewis is not a fan of those actions, but said he expected more of a similar vein to come, given the proclivities of the county’s population, as evidenced by the Democrats’ near sweep in the Nov. 7 election.
“I don’t think they’re righting wrongs,” he said of county officials. “History is meant to be read and interpreted by the public . . . People are being deprived of history.”
No other FCPA facilities currently are under consideration for renaming, the Park Authority’s Boxer said.
