Town may give Custer one more last stand : Backers of a memorial at his Ohio birthplace insist the flamboyant general was more hero than villain.

It was to be expected, of course, given the tenor of the times. But no sooner had Edgar Wallace taken leadership of the Custer Memorial Assn. here that he began hearing the words “Indian killer”--not directed at Wallace, of course, but at the warrior he sought to memorialize.

Indian killer was not a sobriquet Wallace wanted to hear, given the nature of his mission. But the term seemed to express a view that was prevalent even here in the town of the general’s birth: Custer was a cad. He oppressed native people. Why on Earth would anyone want to build a monument to him?

Well, the answer, of course, was economic. Like most folks in these parts, Wallace had never given much thought to the man he is now helping to exalt. But there are fewer jobs in the steel mills these days, and eastern Ohio is reeling. That was why the Chamber of Commerce hatched the idea in 1986 to lure tourists with the Custer connection.

It seemed a good idea to Wallace--still does. But nobody had counted on the revisionist view--much enhanced by the 1989 movie “Dances With Wolves”--that the taking of land from American Indians was a less-than-noble enterprise. Then, last year, largely because of lobbying by American Indians, Congress voted to rename the Custer Battlefield National Monument in Montana the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Where would it end?

Custer’s reputation has fallen mightily since his days as a fearless--many thought suicidally reckless--young general for the Union Army in the Civil War and as an Indian fighter. In recent decades, he has been portrayed most often in movies as a pompous buffoon and dandy. But there are still many who defend the military leader known for his flamboyant dress and flowing strawberry-blonde hair.

“What you see on TV and in the media and what you hear in general conversation is probably 85% fiction and 15% truth,” said Don Horn, president of Little Bighorn Associates, an organization with 1,000 members that is dedicated to “seek the truth of the Little Bighorn and all of Custeriana.”

Horn’s group is supporting New Rumley’s efforts to build a memorial.

Custer was born here in 1838 to Maria and Emmanuel Custer. A larger-than-life statue of the general in full regalia stands in a small state park where the modest family home once stood, alongside an exhibit that notes the high points of his life, his era and his death in 1876 at the Little Bighorn at the hands of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. The memorial association is raising funds to build a museum.

Although it may seem the association is swimming against the tide of popular opinion, the debate over whether Custer was a hero or villain helps the cause, said Wallace, a retired steel worker and farmer. Sometimes when people disparage Custer, he thanks them. “That’s what makes him so popular, the controversy.”

Custer, who was known by the Indians as Son of the Morning Star and by his men as Iron Butt, has at least one distant relative who still lives in these parts.

Robert Custer is 73, and he has the blue eyes, reddish (though graying) hair and long, straight nose that George Armstrong Custer had, even if he feels no strong familial ties to the dashing youngster who left here at age 16 to attend West Point and who never came back.

“When I was young I didn’t pay too much attention to that stuff,” said the retired pottery worker.

From the things he heard about George Custer growing up and from the way he was portrayed in movies, Robert Custer said he felt “a little strange” about being related to him until he started reading books and decided he had nothing to be ashamed of. “He was just doing his duty, what the United States government sent him to do,” he said.

“Most Americans feel very guilty about that part of our history,” said Horn, explaining why he feels Custer has been so maligned. “People use him to kind of represent that era. They take their guilt and put it on his shoulders to take it off their shoulders.

“Today they call him an idiot and a fool, but he was one smart cookie,” said Horn. “He just got fooled that day” at Little Bighorn.

For his part, Wallace has read up on Custer since he was picked to head the memorial effort and now considers him a great man, although his greatness lies, he feels, in his courageous leadership of Union forces during the Civil War rather than in the Indian campaigns.

“He was a little crazy,” Wallace said, simply. “I think he was daring and a little bit nuts, and that’s why he got to be so popular.”