Vicarious Cemetery Travel

Bianca, by Mike Spak

At the beginning of June, 2015, I took a trip to Denver, Colorado, with my family. I had to teach all weekend at a medical conference, and had no opportunity to do any cemetery travel. One evening we had dinner with my friend Mike Spak, who lives in Boulder, Colorado. During dinner, he began showing me the photos on his smart phone. Oddly, several were cemetery photos that he had taken in various places.

I had forgotten that he did this sort of thing. So during dinner, I enjoyed some cemetery travel vicariously through him! The photos you see here are all Mike's.

The angel with the guitar belongs to Bianca Halstead (1965 – 2001), a.k.a Bianca Butthole. She was the bassist and lead singer of the Hollywood-based hard rock band Betty Blowtorch. Bianca was killed in an auto accident in New Orleans. She is buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, CA.  Hollywood Forever is a “must see” for any Cemetery Traveler. I’ve been there twice. (Read more about Bianca here http://foodchainrecords.com/bianca/)

Photo by Mike Spak

William S. Burroughs (1914 – 1997), is the American beat writer famous for his 1959 counterculture novel Naked Lunch. He is interred in the Burroughs family plot in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri. I have always felt guilty for not reading Burroughs, though I am a big fan of Jack Kerouac, another beat writer. Quite a bit of Kerouac’s novel On the Road is based in Denver, and I did feel a bit of that vibe walking down Larimer Street, which is where Kerouac hit town in 1947 when this area was the town’s skid row.

The “Black Angel of Council Bluffs;" photo by Mike Spak

Now for the “Black Angel” of Council Bluffs. Okay, so I thought I knew my cemetery lore. I also thought Mike made up this moniker because this Victorian-era bronze patina angel had taken on a dark hue. Turns out it is locally known as the “Black Angel of Council Bluffs,” Council Bluffs being a town in Iowa across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska.

The angel resides in Fairview Cemetery, marking the grave of Ruth Ann Dodge. The bronze sculpture holds a bronze basin of running water and appears to be standing in a granite boat. After Dodge died in 1916, her two daughters commissioned the memorial to be made by Daniel Chester French, who is best known for creating the white marble statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. According to the website, www.prairieghosts.com, the young women “had strict criteria for French as to how the angel was supposed to look. They wanted it to be a likeness of an angel that had appeared to their mother during a series of visions that she had before her death.”

Interesting. Many such sculptures are created either from a mold or from a live model. This one appeared to be created in the likeness of an actual angel. According to www.prairieghosts.com, Dodge’s dreams were realistic and overwhelming visions about which her daughter Anne stated: “We realized this was no dream, no ordinary occurrence, but an apparition such as appeared to those saints of olden times, who were spiritual seers, holy enough to penetrate the fleshly veil and view spiritual things hidden from the worldly minded.”

Photo by Mike Spak

In these visions, Ruth Dodge described to her daughters that she was on the rocks of a seashore. Out of the mist, “she saw an ancient boat appear that was covered with roses and rare and fragrant flowers. As it approached, she saw that a beautiful young woman was standing in the bow of the ship. As soon as Ruth saw her, she knew that she was a spiritual being and “not of this earth.” (ref.)

Excerpt from “Iowa’s Mysterious Black Angels:”

“The young woman was clad in a glistening white garment that fell in long folds from her shoulders to her feet. Her hair, which reached to her shoulders, looked like spun gold, forming a halo around her head. Her eyes were bright and seemed to look at Ruth, and yet through her, and were filled with an expression that was beyond description.”

The being came toward Ruth carrying a vessel under her arm. The vessel was filled with water that Ruth said “glistened, glittered and sparkled like millions of diamonds.” The woman offered it to her and urged her to drink from it, telling her that it contained a blessing. But as much as Ruth craved the water, she told her daughters, she was not ready to drink it just yet. A few moments later, she “awoke” and the vision was gone. (ref.)

"Ruth had the same vision three times and on the third time, she drank from the water that the angel offered her. A few days later, she died. On her deathbed, she told her daughters that the angel offered her the “wonderful water of life. I drank from it and it gave me immortality.” (ref.)

To the best of their abilities, and based on Ruth’s physical description of the supernatural being in her visions, her daughters had the “black angel” sculpted and placed over their mother’s grave. They must have assumed it was an angel, since their mother never mentioned wings. The angel is standing in a granite boat and is carrying a vessel with water that continually runs. I never really thought about fountains in cemeteries. The angel may symbolize immortality, but then so might running water. The water of life ....

So thanks to my friend Mike for the virtual cemetery tour!

4th Anniversary of "The Cemetery Traveler" Blog!

As I write this blog posting, I begin my FIFTH YEAR of writing The Cemetery Traveler! Can you believe that?!). I’ve posted 248 blogs in the past four years and I truly thank you for reading them! There will be a quiz at the end. (Actually, a few have been guest-written by friends, at my invitation, and I thank them for sharing their knowledge and experience!)

A few of the blogs had to do with two new Facebook pages I started, based on my experiences with the varied personalities taken on by cemeteries during the different seasons of the year. The first one I did was called Cemeteries in the Snow which was received with wild enthusiasm the world over! This was quite exciting and produced some amazing images, as well as expanding readers' awareness of the beuaty of a graveyard under a blanket of snow.

The next page I started at a friend's request, Cemeteries in the Rain. I thought it would be an interesting experiment. The page has a whole different feel to it, as the general idea of a cemetery in the rain is rather depressing! The page has had limited upload participation because, well, other than me, who would be in a cemetery during a rainstorm?! still, I am intrigued at how a cemetery landscape changes drastically with the seasons.

 

As a fairly prolific writer, I can’t help but share an ironic experience with you, which has to do with writing, and with me, specifically. A few months ago my wife and I took our four-year-old daughter to a “play date” at a local (Philadelphia) Quaker school to see if we might send her there for kindergarten. While the kids were off playing (and being evaluated), the parents were gathered in a separate room for chatties and snacks (and most likely also being evaluated, though more discretely). As about thirty of us sat there in comfy chairs listening to the speakers extoll the virtues of the school, the dreaded ice breaker was thrust upon us.

Daughter Olivia learning her "ABCs"

We were each given a slip of paper on which were typed different questions. We were to go up to a stranger and ask them our question. After the person answered, that person would ask you their question. You would then trade slips of paper and go find another stranger to accost. It was a way of learning about each other that was effective and sort of eye-opening. I was asked this question:

“If you found yourself on a desert island, what three things would you want with you?”

Now, dear reader, before you continue, I invite you to jot down three things that first come to your mind – what would YOU take? I’ll go off on some little tangent and then come back with my response. Then we will compare and contrast.

So it has been four years of writing The Cemetery Traveler and I am STILL working on my first book of collected blogs. Its not so much procrastination – life gets in the way when you’re busy planning other things. Occasionally I sit in front of my laptop thinking Jack Kerouac thoughts, having “... an awful realization that I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do to keep the show going ....” (from his book, Big Sur). But the book has to come out. I want it. I think it would be well received.

Occasionally I get writer’s block, but that only lasts a few days at most. Because as you all know, down every road, there’s one more graveyard! And sometimes, beneath a graveyard lies yet another graveyard - I mean, literally. After all, this was how Rome, Paris, London, Seattle, and San Francisco were built – a layer of a new city on top of its buried predecessor. Still, we don’t think of digging further down into a graveyard and expect to find headstones and monuments. Yet this is exactly what is occurring at Mount Moriah Cemetery, in Southwest Philadelphia.

Face-down, fallen headstone in process of being resurrected

It's interesting how the gravestone excavation is proceeding here at Mount Moriah. The Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, Inc., in their attempts to locate grave stones for plot holders and descendants, realized that many of the apparent "missing" stones are actually buried! For the past century, stones have fallen and been buried during ground subsidence, soil erosion, under layers of fallen leaves, etc. Stones buried a foot below ground are typically found with a steel poker driven into the ground. In this place of over 80,000 graves, the chances of hitting a buried stone are quite good.

Harry Houdini at Heller's grave (ref)

That's how the headstone of noted nineteenth century magician Robert Heller was located. The photo at the beginning of this article is me standing next to it. Directly above (in an early 1900s photo) is Harry Houdini standing next to it! The stone had been lying in the dirt, face down, for may years. Now it is upright, and the grounds around it have been cleared so people can visit. 

So my point (and sometimes I do indeed have one) is, that since there are stories within stories, graves below graves, I may never run out of subject matter! And as long as I can get around and travel to all these interesting graveyards, I am hopeful that I can do my part to keep the memories of the occupants alive. And I well appreciate you following my blog, if only to avoid being reproached by friends for an uncalled for lack in your graveyard education!

Now then, about the three things I would want with me if I found myself on a desert island - I responded, “A guitar, a very long novel, and my wife.” This in itself may be telling in some way. However, what REALLY got me thinking about my answer was the comparative answers of other people who were asked this same question. Some I asked personally, others I overheard in the room. EVERYONE else included in their list of three items some electronic device with which to communicate with the outside world! That never occurred to me! I found this to be ironic and hilarious at the same time, since normally, I cannot shut up. So I guess if I found myself on a desert island, after reading the book and playing the guitar, I might just talk my wife to death about cemeteries.

Flattened Tombstones

King David Memorial Park, Bensalem (NE Philadelphia)

What do Nancy Spungen (of "Sid and Nancy" fame) and actor John Barrymore have in common? Admittedly, not much. However, they both have flat-to-the-ground tombstones. Spungen is buried in a cemetery where flat stones are required, and Barrymore, along with the rest of the Barrymore theatrical dynasty, seems to have chosen flat markers by choice. While practical, I can't imagine anything more mundane.

Mt. Vernon Cemetery, Philadelphia

Back in the early 1990s, I made a trip to Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale California to see the Lone Ranger's grave, among others. I found that the majority of the 250,000 inhabitants have flush to the ground grave markers - all the same size! I certainly didn't find it very attractive - grassy fields punctuated with cheesy modern sculptures here and there. I could find none of the graves I came there to see. I remember asking the groundskeeper why its like this, and he replied, beaming, “It makes it so easy to cut the grass!”

Obviously, that's the main attraction - ease of maintenance. But I just don't get it. Granted, we could not reproduce the splendor of a Victorian sculpture garden cemetery today - the cost would be prohibitive. Plus, stone carving just ain't what it used to be! While such cemeteries had a distinct plan, the sheer variety of the monuments themselves gave an air of and uniqueness to each cemetery.

The trend today, of course, is vastly different. Flat markers, or "grass markers," as they're called on the Bertolini Memorials and Monuments website, are only one of many regulations we are warned about:

CEMETERY RULES and REGULATIONS

Most cemeteries have regulations and rules concerning the size, style, color, and design of headstone, markers and memorials. Some examples are:

1. Catholic cemeteries always require a religious design on the headstone.
2. Some may not allow porcelain pictures placed on the surface of a stone.
3. Many sections of cemeteries require specific styles of markers such as a flat type. This makes it easier for lawn care maintenance.

A cemetery can not refuse acceptance of your memorial as long as it meets their provided specifications. The client has the right to purchase their memorial from a vendor of their choice.

As it turns out, the Forest Lawn Cemetery chain (in Southern California) may have actually been the instigator of this trend toward flat grave markers. In 1906, Forest Lawn was founded by a group of San Francisco businessmen, with Dr. Hubert Eaton credited as its founder. According to Wikipedia, Eaton developed  the "memorial park plan," of eliminating upright grave markers.

[Eaton] was convinced that most cemeteries were "unsightly, depressing stoneyards" and pledged to create one that would reflect his optimistic, Christian beliefs, "as unlike other cemeteries as sunshine is unlike darkness." He envisioned Forest Lawn to be "a great park devoid of misshapen monuments and other signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, beautiful statuary, and ... memorial architecture" - ref

Ed at Jack Kerouac's grave

So in a cemetery filled with flat markers, how do visitors even find the graves of their loved ones? If the grounds are not maintained, grass and dirt can just cover them up! And what about all the states where it snows? I can see Forest Lawn not needing to concern itself with this, but the Barrymore and Spungen graves are in the Northeast part of the U.S. - Pennsylvania, in fact. It snows here! And what about Jack Kerouac's flat stone in Lowell, Massachusetts? Do you just not go and visit your loved ones' graves in the winter? (Click here for an amusing video of an adventure in the snow.)

Granted, my trip to Glendale was in the early 1990s, and the Internet was not yet the wealth of information that it is today.Websites like FindAGrave.com now help us in our quest. During a current search for comedian Sam Kinison's burial place, I was surprised to find these directions!

Burial: Memorial Park Cemetery
Tulsa,Tulsa County
Oklahoma, USA
Plot: Section 28 - Garden of the Apostles in the SE quad. GPS coordinates are N 36°05.095 W 095°52.814.

I think I'll end my little rant here with a story about Spungen's grave, and how Sid Vicious' mom wanted to bury his ashes there. The punk rock musician from the Sex Pistols supposedly stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death in their suite at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan in 1978. Spungen was laid to rest at King David Memorial Park, Bensalem (NE Philadelphia), in Bucks county, PA. Vicious was arrested for the murder, but never went to trial. Three months later while out on bail, he overdosed on heroin and died. His mom, Ann, and some close friends had Sid's body cremated and intended to fulfill Sid's wish: "When I die, bury me next to Nancy."

Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, by Eileen Polk (ref.)

Spungen's mother, however, wanted no part of this, so the keepers of Sid's ashes attempted to do what my family has done in the past - illegally bury them on another person's plot. As bizarre as the following account is, I can relate. (Read about my own bizarre experiences disposing of family cremains here and here). Eileen Polk describes the experience in the book, Please Kill Me, The Uncensored Oral History of Punk; Polk was a photographer and friend of Sid and Nancy.

We're standing at the gravesite and it was snowing. We were all crying. We just said some prayers and left some flowers.Then we drove around to the other edge of the cemetery. We parked the car and Ann [Sid Vicious' mother] took the ashes, went over the fence, back to the gravesite, and dumped Sid's ashes on Nancy's grave. Then she came back and got in the car and said, 'Well, they're finally together.' And that was that.

Further Reading:

Read my other two Cemetery Traveler blog postings about disposing of cremains:
Nana's Ashes
Ceramic Death Portraits

About Forest Lawn Cemeteries, from Wikipedia:

"Forest Lawn's 300 acres of intensely landscaped grounds and thematic sculptures were the inspiration for the biting commentary of Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel The Loved One and Jessica Mitford's acerbic The American Way of Death. Many commentators have considered Forest Lawn to be a unique American creation, and perhaps a uniquely maudlin Los Angeles creation, with its 'theme park' approach to death."

Many thanks to Melanie Hoch at REPO records in Philadelphia for inspiration for this article.

"On the Road" with Jack Kerouac and The Cemetery Traveler

Its fitting that The Cemetery Traveler would visit the grave of Jack Kerouac, pop culture's most famous traveler. I was driving through New England a few years back and made it a point to stop to see his grave, at the Edson City Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Known mainly for his epic travel adventure, "On the Road," Kerouac epitomized wanderlust for an entire generation. He continues to do so now, years after his death. You simply cannot read "On the Road" without wanting to just drive recklessly off into the sunset in search of Meaning. I read it, and bought a convertible. 

So why would I want to visit his grave? Why would anyone want to visit a celebrity's grave? Some of us do this because it enables us to get closer to the person than we could possibly have gotten in real life. For me, I think it was to get closer to the spirit of Kerouac's writing (which was a maddening stream of consciousness style further popularized a decade later by Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). Kerouac isn't exactly a role model for me, its just that his writing touched a nerve: "Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me."

I think I was driving back from a ski trip in New Hampshire, when I decided to stop in Lowell. Lowell is a mill town, the nation's textile epicenter during the American Industrial Revolution. A workingman's town, and Kerouac's hometown. He was born there in 1922--Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac. He was French-Canadian, his parents had immigrated from Quebec, Canada. You'll notice the stone says "Jean," not Jack.

Edson City Cemetery is a relatively large, yet flat and plain looking cemetery. The woman at the gatehouse is happily prepared to give you a map showing how to get to the grave (it is arguably Lowell's most popular tourist attraction). Otherwise it would be rather difficult to find as the grave marker is flush with the ground. Let me rephrase that - its actually easy to find if you just take note of the several cars lined up waiting near the grave. This was the oddest thing! No one would bother you as you paid your respects, lit your candle, or left your token offering. As you drove away, the next car would drive up almost religiously, people would get out, walk to the grave, and spend some quiet moments. What were they reflecting on, I wondered? And why such reverence?

I've visited the grave sites of dozens of celebrities (in their own right) and have never encountered another live visitor! Not that I really expected anyone to be hanging out near mathematician Kurt Godel's grave in Princeton (yeah, I'm a fan), but wouldn't you expect to see at least a few people at Rudolph Valentino's grave in Hollywood? I mean, even given the fact that the Hollywood Grave Line Tours will not allow people to get out and walk around...

Statue near Kerouac's grave

So these people still line up to visit Kerouac's grave, decades after his death. Why? Are they, like On the Road's characters Sal and Dean, actually on a spiritual quest? Why such reverence? Kerouac's friend Jim Holmes said,"though the characters rushed back and forth across the country at the slightest pretext, gathering kicks along the way, their real journey was inward; and if they seemed to trespass most boundaries, legal and moral, it was only in the hope of finding a belief on the other side."

Maybe that's part of the reason I tear off at the drop of a hat in search of new cemeteries to photograph. The creative process of photography has always helped me deal with the world, with personal issues, and even to judge myself (in retrospect, psychiatry would've been cheaper). However, I believe that spending time in cemeteries has helped me search for, and sometimes find, meaning in an otherwise entropic world. Seeing others find meaning in my work has been an unexpected gift. 

Read about Hollywood's bizarre Grave Line Tours
Visit Lowell, Massachusetts

Purchase On the Road and change your life for a mere ten bucks!