Tom Dietzel has loved history for as long as he can remember, especially the Revolutionary War.
“I literally told my third grade teacher that I wanted to be a Minuteman when I grew up,” he said.
As an adult, he channeled that childhood dream into a lifelong hobby, first giving tours on the Freedom Trail and now playing Paul Revere, who alerted the Minutemen on his midnight ride.
Dietzel is among the hundreds of living history reenactors in the state. And this year, the nation’s 250th birthday, has been busy. Battles, marches and the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. And in a time when how history is taught is up for debate, these buffs see their work as more important than ever.
“ I have a responsibility … to the people then to try and get their story right so that people today can reframe it themselves,” Dietzel said of Revere and his brethren. “And I do think I owe it to the people now to share what I’ve learned, share my passion for it.”
The American Revolution is a particularly popular time period for reenactors based in Massachusetts. Dietzel, 38, got into this hobby because he loves history. He also loves dressing up. He takes pride in researching outfits and hand-sewing them. Accuracy is key — even in the summer.
“If I want to know what it was like to be Paul Revere, I have to know how hot it was to wear wool in June, just like Paul Revere had to,” he said. “You get very used to it.”
Dietzel says he has more 18th century outfits than modern-day clothes. His wife, Elizabeth Dowd, stands beside him and nods in agreement.
“When we bought a house together we knew we needed at least a two-bedroom,” he said. “One for us to sleep in and one for my coats to sleep in.”
One of the people Dietzel turns to for help on costumes is renowned historical tailor Henry Cooke, who lives in Randolph. He helps reenactors get the right look through his company Historical Costume Services and has designed hundreds of outfits for people across the country.
Cooke said he got into this work because he values history. When he’s creating historical clothes, he thinks about the people who would have worn them in the past, those who wear them now, and how both are connected.
“They’re people just like you and me,” he said of the historical figures. “The more I study them, the more I realize we are people separated by 250 years now, but I think they would recognize us, and we would recognize them in the things we cherish.”
Reenacting can be an expensive and time-consuming hobby. Because of this, it has a reputation for attracting mostly older men who may have more money and resources. But many new reenactors, like 17-year-old Merrian Sanna, are bucking that trend. She mainly plays unnamed civilians. Some of those characters have stories that were seldom recorded. She recently started portraying the role of an indentured servant.
“For so much of history, we forget that impoverished people have always existed,” she said.
Sanna, like her older peers, takes reenacting very seriously. She spends a lot of time online researching anything that helps perfect her impressions.
The internet has changed the hobby, reenactor Laura Grzybowski said, allowing reenactors to access information anywhere, rather than in person or at a museum. Like Sanna, Grzybowski also often depicts underrepresented stories of civilian women caught up in the throes of war. She said over the last decade, there has been a bigger effort to tell the stories of marginalized groups. She recalled a striking interaction with a bystander during a past parade when she was dressed as a World War II reenactor.
“I just remember this little girl on the side like gasping, being like, ‘It’s a girl!’ ” she said. “I forget that it is still a big deal that we do this and it is important that there are a lot of points of view, and the women are still there, and other people represented.”
Tom Dietzel, the Paul Revere reenactor, welcomes this expansion of storytelling — especially as some have tried to narrow the scope. Last month, federal officials ordered National Park Service staff to remove some information on slavery, immigration and suffrage from the Bunker Hill Monument. Dietzel said it’s a disservice to the community.
“You might not necessarily agree with some style of interpretation, but the way to learn and the way to grow is not just to keep sitting yourself into an echo chamber,” he said. “It’s to find these things that challenge you.”
Dietzel said his reenactor community has a saying: “When you see us, think of them.” He wants the public to think of the people he portrays as human, not just heroes who did no wrong. Paul Revere, for example, was a family man and silversmith — with a reportedly brash and sometimes arrogant personality.
“I want to try to the best of my degree to truly fill the shoes of this person so that I can understand where they were coming from,” he said. “And really turn these mythic figures back into the people they really were.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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