TERRE HAUTE —
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave. They were her favorite flowers, and since I have so many of them growing around my place, it takes little effort to clip a few favored purple blooms and drive the mile into town for a special delivery. My daughter, Ellen, sometimes goes with me, and again this year we stood together in a warm May breeze, staring at my parents’ long gray stone, wondering how the years since their deaths could have passed so quickly.
If you have read in this space before, you know that my family has a keen interest in cemeteries. Between the four of us, we have walked them, small and large, from New England to California, from Michigan to South Carolina, and we have visited the graves and tombs of the wealthy and famous, as well as the poor and powerless; we are simply interested in them and find nothing morbid with the habit. From Mark Twain to Ava Gardner, John Rockefeller to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, we’ve paid our respects to a lot of folks.
Years ago, more Americans were interested in graveyards, and not just on Memorial Day. On the average, death came earlier to us, and it was nearly impossible not to know a family that was untouched by someone’s tragic passing, whether it came to the strongest in the coal mines or train yards, or to the youngest in the form of diphtheria or typhoid.
By the time American cities were rapidly expanding in the 19th Century, huge tracts of land were being devoted more and more to develop graveyards, places where families and friends could commune with nature and God in settings away from the soot and grime of urban life. Terre Haute’s own Highland Lawn is a classic example of that American Romantic Landscape Movement, particularly with its rolling hills and Romanesque chapel.
Rosedale has few of those romantic qualities; it is an old cemetery, to be sure, for the town, itself, is old, but it is a nearly flat plot of sandy soil with a circular drive and yellow-red sandstone entrance markers, put in place during an expansion a half-century ago. Storms and time have taken all but a few of its big, old maples, but a huge blue ash dominates the landscape despite facing the occasional amputation. The cemetery is exceptionally well kept, neat and clean and trimmed, as well as any graveyard I think I have ever seen anywhere, and for that we are grateful.
But we have not always found the cemeteries we visit in such fine shape. My kids were still kids when I drove the family to Washington, D.C., some 15 years ago, and not long after we walked open-mouthed through the White House and had taken in Arlington National Cemetery and Ford’s Theatre — literally everything the capital had to show us in a sore-footed week — we climbed aboard the subway for the last time on our last day to make our way out to Congressional Cemetery, a “must-see” according to our guidebook. What we found was a disgrace.
Congressional is older than Arlington by nearly 60 years; it is the final resting place for such luminaries as J. Edgar Hoover and John Philip Sousa. But it was weedy and unkempt and forlorn, and more than a little frightening when we saw it that day. Against the advice of a beat cop, who stood near the station entrance, we hiked with backpacks and cameras in tow, looking every inch the yokel tourists we were. But when we walked up to Congressional’s gates, we knew right away that it was as far as we wanted to go. The horseweeds and grass were as high as our heads in some places, and we left a little sad that those buried there were not given the dignity they deserved.
Congressional was cleaned up, and today its website shows a huge expanse of some 55,000 well-tended gravesites. Its makeover is hardly the case for many cemeteries these days. We sometimes hear of vandals tipping stones and stealing from the grief-stricken, while other graveyards are just shaggy and forgotten, the victims of woefully poor budgets or a lack of concern. Thankfully, that is not how it’s worked out at Rosedale, where my parents and grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and even my great-niece are buried. The people who take care of the place take great pride in their work, and theirs is a story about people who go well beyond their job descriptions.
Linda Smith is one of those people. Linda, the town’s deputy clerk, works at the town hall in a building that once housed the church my grandparents attended. Appropriately, she and her husband, Maurice, live on Cemetery Street, just a stone’s throw from the graveyard’s gates. She began working there when Junior Briddick, upon his retirement as the longtime caretaker, convinced her she should take his place. Junior is now buried under the sod for which he lovingly cared. Now, Linda, who bears the title “sexton,” a word that’s been around since the 13th Century, wants to work at the cemetery “as long as I can.”
“My first thought (after Briddick’s request) was, no. As a child, I was terrified of this place. Now, I find it a source of comfort and healing. The graveyard is very near and dear to my heart, as it has so much history of Rosedale, and every grave has a story and family that is attached to it,” Smith said.
She doesn’t work alone. Maurice lends a helping hand every once in a while, and their friend, Bob Groves, puts in at least three days a week there, despite maintaining a pretty heavy running routine. In fact, for a place that is often associated with total inactivity, the cemetery is looked after by a corps of devotees who just want it to look nice, and they have the calluses to show for it.
As signs of respect for the dead, and for the living who cared for them, we can solemnly stand on street corners and remove our hats as funeral processions pass by; we can send flowers and cards to the bereaved; we can make contributions to favorite charities in their memories. But some folks, like Linda and Bob, pay their respect through hard work, by putting in hours on their hands and knees, pulling weeds and sweating, by leveling grave markers and seeding grass and handling rakes and shovels.
There’s more than one way to show respect this Memorial Day, and I’m glad to have friends who realize that better than most.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by e-mail at hickory913@aol.com or by writing to him c/o The Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Read more of Mike’s stories at http://tribstar.com/mike_lunsford, and visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com. His third collection of stories is due to be released in the fall.
Mike Lunsford
Related Photos
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Submitted photo Honored: This photo shows the gravesite of World War I Gold Star boy Tony Kashon, who was killed in France as a member of the 150th Field Artillery in 1918.
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Submitted photo Looking across: This photo shows a view toward the southeast corner of Rosedale Cemetery.
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Tribune-Star columnist Mike Lunsford
Discussion
Paying respect in more way than one way…
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Taking a road less traveled in this illogical life
If you can still recall reading the poetry of Robert Frost in your high school English class years ago, I imagine that you can conjure up a line or two from his “The Road Not Taken.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
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THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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