San Fernando Cemeteries No. 1 & No. 2

Halloween snow today. Flurries on and off through much of the day, presaging a cold outing for those trolling for candy. Halloween Snow 2023

I doubt that the kids mind. Their adult companions trailing behind, on the other hand, might be a mite annoyed. Glad that part of being a parent is well behind me.

Early on Saturday morning I made my way to what I believe is the oldest Catholic cemetery in San Antonio, San Fernando No. 1, which is in a modest neighborhood just west of the King William district. Cementerio de San Fernando, to go by the entrance.San Fernando No. 1 San Antonio San Fernando No. 1 San Antonio

Overnight rain had left puddles and mud. I was the only living person among the old stones in soggy ground that morning.San Fernando No 1 San Antonio San Fernando No 1 San Antonio San Fernando No 1 San Antonio

The elements continue to wear away even the larger memorials.San Fernando No 1 San Antonio San Fernando No 1 San Antonio

Some Ursuline Sisters rest in the cemetery.San Fernando No. 1 San Antonio

Some signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and a SA mayor or two are reportedly buried in the cemetery as well, but this was the only memorial of note that I saw.San Fernando No. 1 San Antonio

“Placido Olivarri is most famous for his service as a scout and guide for the Texas Revolutionary Army under Sam Houston,” the Texas State Historical Association reports. “His proficiency as a scout was so great that Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos of the Mexican Army offered a substantial bounty for Olivarri’s capture, dead or alive… Following the Texas Revolution, Olivarri became a landowner and wagon train manager in San Antonio.”

San Fernando No. 1 reportedly started taking burials in 1840 – during the brief period of the Republic, that is. The newer San Fernando No. 2 (opened in 1921) is considerably west of the first one, but not hard to find, and still an active cemetery. There is a No. 3, but I didn’t make it out that way this time.

I arrived at No. 2 in the afternoon, once the skies had cleared. It too was muddy.San Fernando No 2 San Antonio San Fernando No 2 San Antonio

Deep in the cemetery is a section for clergy.San Fernando No 2 San Antonio San Fernando No 2 San Antonio San Fernando No 2 San Antonio San Fernando No 2 San Antonio

Some stones suggest 20th-century prosperity in San Antonio. Or at least, money for more impressive memorials.San Fernando No 2 San Antonio San Fernando No 2 San Antonio San Fernando No 2 San Antonio

In the newer sections, more color.San Fernando No 2 San Antonio San Fernando No 2 San Antonio San Fernando No 2 San Antonio San Fernando No 2 San Antonio

After all, the Day of the Dead is coming soon.

South Texas ’23: Kerrville & Bandera

Last Tuesday, my brother Jay and I drove from San Antonio to Kerrville, Texas (pop. 24,200) to visit an old friend of his, who has a separate small building in his back yard to house an extensive model train that he’s building. We got a detailed tour. Cool.

That was part of a larger trip that took me to Austin and San Antonio to visit friends and family. I flew to Austin on October 18 and returned from San Antonio today.

Rather than take I-10 west from San Antonio to Kerrville (though we returned that way), we drove Texas 16, which is mostly a two-lane highway that winds from exurban San Antonio and then into the Hill Country. Always good to drive the Hill Country, even on a rainy day. It was a rainy week in South Texas on the whole, but still quite warm for October. Had a few sweaty walks in San Antonio last week as well, more about which later.

Besides visiting Bob and his wife Nancy and his HO model train construction, we also stopped by the Glen Rest Cemetery in Kerrville (my idea). The recent rains had made it a muddy cemetery. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, but also mud to muddy?Kerrville, Texas Kerrville, Texas Kerrville, Texas

A curious figure. At least for a cemetery.Kerrville, Texas Kerrville, Texas

Glen Rest – which is incorrectly noted as Glen Rose on Google Maps – dates from 1892, according to the Texas Historical Commission plaque on site. “Glen Rest Cemetery is the final resting place for many pioneer and historic families of Kerrville and the surrounding Hill Country,” it says.

En route to Kerrville on highway Texas 16 is the much smaller burg of Bandera, pop. 829 and seat of Bandera County. That means a courthouse, and we stopped to take a look.Bandera, Texas

The courthouse itself isn’t unusual, but it is positioned unusually. Instead of being the focus of a square, it’s simply facing the highway. So are a handful of memorials. This one honors “All Cowboys” because Bandera is “Cowboy Capital of the World.”Bandera, Texas

This stone oddity honors a Bandera pioneer named Amasa Clark, giving his birth and death dates as 1825-1927.Bandera, Texas Bandera, Texas

More about him is at Frontier Times magazine, which annoyingly doesn’t say when the text was written, who wrote it or where it was published. Internal evidence, along with the style of writing, puts it in the early 1920s, probably in a local newspaper. Clark came to the site of Bandera in 1852, not long after serving in the war with Mexico, and stayed until his death in 1927 as a very old man.

Also along the highway in Bandera is a strip center including a store the likes of which I’d never seen before. Neither had Jay.Bandera, Texas Bandera, Texas

We had to take a look inside.Bandera, Texas Bandera, Texas

I should have asked to woman behind the counter how long the store has been in business, or whether the man himself gets a cut, or some other questions, but I was in vacation mode, not interview mode. So all I know is what I saw, which was enough. For the record, and this is no surprise, Trump overwhelmingly carried Bandera County — 79.1% to 19.7% for Biden — in the 2020 election.

Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

Head west on Bluemound Road in Milwaukee – once an Indian trace, later an early paved road – and before long you arrive at Calvary Cemetery. The entrance is easy to spot, though my shot is from inside.Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

It’s Milwaukee’s oldest Catholic cemetery, counting as a rural cemetery, as it was outside the young city in the 1850s. About 80,000 people repose there these days, including the first mayor of Milwaukee, Solomon Juneau.

I didn’t see his grave. But there were a lot of others, varying in style, age, condition and carved sentiment. The ground has contour and the trees are mature. Everything you need for a picturesque cemetery.Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

Including some sizable art and a handful of mausoleums.Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

That’s the stone of the Jung family, early Milwaukee brewers. What was it Jung said about beer being the royal road to the unconscious? No, that was that other Milwaukee brewer, Ziggy Freud. I believe they were rivals.Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

A good number of priests are buried at Calvary, including some fairly recent internments, such as this long row of Jesuits.Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

More Jesuits. A wall of Jesuits, with room for a few more.Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

The cemetery was unusually busy for a cemetery, because it was on the Doors Open Milwaukee list. Not for the grounds or stones, but for the chapel atop the fittingly named Chapel Hill.Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

“This cream brick Romanesque style chapel was designed by architect Erhard Brielmaier and built in 1899,” says Historic Milwaukee. “A noted designer of Catholic churches around the country, Brielmaier also designed the famous St. Josaphat on the city’s south side, under construction at the same time. The chapel is located on one of the highest elevations in the city with impressive views of Story Hill, Miller Park and the downtown skyline.”

A nonprofit, the Friends of Calvary Cemetery, is overseeing the long and expensive restoration of the chapel. Some decades ago, the Archdiocese had planned to tear it down, but fortunately preservationists prevailed. Members of the Friends showed visitors around the inside on Saturday. We had to sign a waver in case a piece of it fell on us.Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

The crypt was dark and crypt-like.Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

“Originally built intended for services, prayers, private contemplation, and as a mausoleum for clergy, only one clergy member was ever buried at the site,” Historic Milwaukee continues. “The structure has two levels: the upper level features the chapel, with its raised sanctuary and high altar, side altars recessed in twin apses, lofty vaulted ceilings, soaring arches and central dome; the lower level is the bi-level mausoleum containing 45 crypts. Reposing directly beneath the main altar is the body of Reverend Idziego Tarasiewicza, interred in 1903.”

Why just him? The authoritative answer seems to be, dunno. Go figure.

The Peshtigo Fire Museum & Fire Cemetery

You can drive from Sault Ste. Marie to metro Chicago in a day. It would be a long day, maybe eight or nine hours depending on traffic, construction, etc., but you can do it. I decided against such a long day, breaking the trip roughly in half by spending the last night of the drive around Lake Superior – which I was leaving far behind by this point – in Marinette, Wisconsin.

One reason: so I could enjoy a leisurely drive through the UP, including westward on Michigan 28 and then south on National Forest 13 through Hiawatha National Forest.

These are roads unlikely to make it on conventional best-drive lists, except for one that I might compile myself according to idiosyncratic lights, which might also include the Icefields Parkway, Lake Shore Drive, Alamo Heights Blvd., North Carolina 12 on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, among others that come to mind. That the UP has two such favorite roads says something about the car-commercial driving to be had in the mostly forested UP.

Light enough traffic, at least on National Forest 13, that you can stand on the center line and take pictures at your leisure.

Another thing about NF 13: It took me to Pete’s Lake once upon a few times, and again on August 5, though I didn’t camp this time or experience a thunderstorm or yahoos yelling in the distance. It remains a sentimental favorite spot.National Forest 13

On the morning of August 6, I finally headed home, with one more stop in mind: Peshtigo, Wisconsin, a place that demonstrates, if nothing else, that the human mind is a creature of habit.

That includes me. I only mentioned the town in passing in 2006, when we stopped at the Peshtigo Fire Museum.Peshtigo Fire Museum Peshtigo Fire Museum

The building is a former Congregational church, on the site of a Catholic church that burned down in the firestorm of 1871 – which remains the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Remarkably, the Maui wildfire is, for now, placed at fifth; modernity can’t protect us from everything.

“On the night of October 8, 1871, in Peshtigo, a lumber town about seven miles southwest of the Michigan-Wisconsin border, hundreds of people died: burned by fire, suffocating from smoke, or drowning or succumbing to hypothermia while trying to shelter in the Peshtigo River,” notes USA Today.

“But the fire also raged across Oconto and Marinette counties into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, while another blaze burned across the bay of Green Bay in Brown, Door, and Kewaunee counties.”

No one knows exactly how many people perished in the Peshtigo fire — I’ve seen varying estimates, all in the low thousands — but it was certainly more than in the Great Chicago Fire, which happened the same day. Which one is mostly remembered? Chicago, of course, thus illustrating a habit of mind. Once a thing enters the tapestry of the popular imagination, it can crowd out similar events.

Peshtigo isn’t a large museum, but it is full of stuff.Peshtigo Fire Museum

The museum includes much information and a few artifacts from the fire, though naturally not much survived. The fire itself is illustrated not by photography, but artwork.Peshtigo Fire Museum

Two volunteer docents were on hand to spread the word about the fire. It’s the only distinction for modern Peshtigo, pop. 3,400 or so. One was a woman about my age, the other a woman about Ann’s age. Again, good to see young’ins up on their local history.

Speaking of that, the museum is actually more local history than the single incident of the fire, as important as that is. As such, there are many artifacts from the entire spectrum of the town’s history (including in the basement).Peshtigo Fire Museum Peshtigo Fire Museum Peshtigo Fire Museum Peshtigo Fire Museum

Next to the museum is the Peshtigo Fire Cemetery.Peshtigo Fire Cemetery Peshtigo Fire Cemetery Peshtigo Fire Cemetery

Including survivors of the fire.Peshtigo Fire Cemetery

Along with many who did not.Peshtigo Fire Cemetery Peshtigo Fire Cemetery

Too grim a note to end on. Not far south of Peshtigo is a roadside plaque I’d seen before, but not photographed.45th parallel Wisconsin 45th parallel Wisconsin

“The most obsessive of all of 45th Parallel markers are the plaque-on-rocks sponsored by Frank E. Noyes,” says Roadside America. “We know that he sponsored them because he put his name on every one.

“Frank was 82 years old, a faithful Episcopalian and 32nd degree Mason, and president, general manager, and editor of The Daily Eagle, a Wisconsin newspaper founded by his dad. For reasons lost to time, he became fixated on the intangible world of latitude in 1938 and put up plaques around his home town of Marinette to mark the halfway line.”

There are other such signs, of course, not of Frank Noyes origin, such as at the Montana-Wyoming border, as seen in 2005.

Except for bathroom and gas breaks, the Wisconsin 45th parallel proved to be the last stop of the nearly 2,000 miles around the lake.

Marathon to Sault Ste. Marie by Way of Wawa

I was pumping gas not long ago, and spotted what I took to be shiny penny on the pavement near the pump. A closer look told me it wasn’t a U.S. cent, but I didn’t ID it until I’d picked it up and eyed it when I got back in the car. Ten won, it turned out to be.

It’s the smallest currently circulating South Korean coin, both physically and in value. In theory, 10 won is worth 0.75 U.S. cents. A whopping seven and a half mills. The structure depicted is the Dabotap pagoda, a southeast-coast relic of the ancient kingdom of Silla, which lorded over most of the peninsula more than 1,000 years ago.

Back-and-forth between Korea and the U.S., and more specifically northwest suburban Chicago, is no unusual thing in our time, but still I was mildly surprised to find it — like I felt finding a New Zealand 20-cent piece. Made my day.

On the morning of August 3, I left Marathon, but not before a look at the one-room Marathon Museum, and a talk with a lanky young man who said he’d been hired just three weeks earlier to run the place, his first job out of college. He had grown up in the area, gone away for school, and only now was beginning to appreciate the history of the place, he said, as he read more and more.Marathon, Ontario

Pretty refreshing, finding someone that young with an interest in history. That is an old man thing to say, of course, but anyway I was glad to hear a bit about the town, such as its origin as a prospective wood pulp mill whose development accelerated in the early 1940s when Canadian raw material extraction was deemed important to the Allied war effort. A postwar boom made Marathon into a genuine town; a wood pulp mill town that prospered until the crushing blow of the mill closing in 2009.

A public tank in Marathon.Marathon, Ontario

Here’s a story of early Marathon: POW logging camps were built in the area after Canada entered the war in 1939, and on April 18, 1941, 28 German prisoners made a break for it, and many more attempted it, in a tunneling scheme worthy of The Great Escape or rather the real incident of the 1944 escape from Stalag Luft III. The goal of the prisoners at Camp X, Angler was to cross into the still-neutral United States. None made it. This article, which is serious need of an editor, nevertheless tells the tale of the long-abandoned camp not far off the modern road.

“Travellers on the Trans-Canada highway would not notice the dirt track leading south from the highway some four kilometres west of Marathon, Ontario,” the site says. “There is no sign to indicate where it leads, and no historical marker to record what happened along that track.”

This part of the Trans-Canada has more visible abandoned sites. Making a go of a business must be tough up there.Marathon, Ontario Marathon, Ontario

White River, Ontario has a claim on the origin of Winne-the-Pooh.White River, Ontario White River, Ontario

All well and good, but why do we see the Disney iteration and not one based on the illustrations by E. H. Shepard? Do you think Winnie wore a jacket at the London Zoo? No, she did not.

Wawa has more than its steel goose statue. There’s a pleasant lakeside path, for example.White River, Ontario White River, Ontario

On the relatively small Wawa Lake, not Superior. Just an everyday relic of the last ice age.

St. Mary Margaret Cemetery in the town (closed 1954) includes the remains of old-time Wawa-area miners. Most unmarked.Wawa, Ontario Wawa, Ontario Wawa, Ontario

I sought out lunch at Philly Wawa Hoagie. A few days earlier, I’d heard the owner interviewed on a CBC radio show. Why not, I figured. I ordered the shawarma poutine.Wawa, Ontario

How Canadian is that, eh? It was good and I barely needed to eat dinner.

Wawa features a bit more public art than the goose. Including figures all labeled “Gitchee Goomee” just on the other side of the visitor center from the goose.Wawa, Ontario Wawa, Ontario Wawa, Ontario

A few miles out of Wawa, down a dirt road, is Magpie Scenic High Falls.near Wawa, Ontario

Not that high, unless you’re about to tumble over the edge. It’s the overflow spill weir of the Harris Hydroelectric Generating Station, which has a capacity of 13MW. Signs at the sight are emphatic about not climbing the thing, since spillway volume is notoriously fickle. (I’m paraphrasing.)

Nice falls, but the glory was getting there and back.near Wawa, Ontario near Wawa, Ontario near Wawa, Ontario

My goal for the day was Sault. Ste. Marie, Canadian side, so I pressed on. More abandoned Ontario.near Wawa, Ontario near Wawa, Ontario

A plaque about the road itself.

From the plaque, it was only an easy walk to Chippewa Falls, so I went.Chippewa Falls, Ontario Chippewa Falls, Ontario Chippewa Falls, Ontario

Closer to Sault Ste. Marie, near the entrance of Pancake Bay Provincial Park, is a small complex of tourist shops on the Trans-Canada. I took a good look around, and confirmed that stores in this part of Canada offer a woefully small number of postcards. Too bad, there’s a lot of scenic raw material for postcards in this part of Canada.

Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison

I spent the first night of the drive in Madison, Wisconsin, ensconced in a motel room as a late evening thunderstorm, a powerful one, blew through. Little is so pleasing as the sound of wind and thunder and strong rain outside while you are comfortably in your bed – in a rented room.

The next morning dawned clear and warm. So of course the first place I went was a storied old cemetery, a creation of the 19th-century rural cemetery movement, in this case Madison’s Forest Hill Cemetery, dating from 1857. It’s an expansive place.Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison

A small section near the entrance is devoted to Civil War dead.Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison

It was a pre-dog tag war.Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison

A couple of small chapels grace the grounds.Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison

But not a lot of large memorials. Rather, a fair number of mid-sized ones.Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison

Along with many old stones, of course. Some crumbling, as the decades of Wisconsin weather do what they do.Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison

Still, Forest Hill, which is forested but not very hilly, is an active cemetery, with newer stones as well.Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison

Fighting Bob La Follette and some other La Follettes are buried at Forest Hill, but I didn’t look for anyone in particular and didn’t know he was there until later. Seeing his bust at the capitol the day before counted, by my attenuated standards, as visiting a presidential site.

After all, he headed the Progressive ticket almost 100 years ago in ’24, getting a respectable 4.8 million votes (Davis got 8.3 million and Coolidge 15.7 million). He also got some electoral votes – Wisconsin’s 13 — which not all third-party candidates do. George Wallace was the last such candidate to do so, in 1968 with 46 votes, but none can compare to the haul made by TR when he ran as a Bull Moose (88 votes). And I’m not counting the 1860 election; everyone was essentially a third-party candidate that time.

The Wiki data on presidential elections is quite granular. From it, I learned that the county with the highest percentage of Progressive votes in 1924 wasn’t in Wisconsin, but Texas: Comal County, with nearly 74% going for Fighting Bob. That’s a nice go figure fact.

Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville

Oak Hill seems to be a common cemetery name. Sometimes I think there are only about a dozen cemetery names all together, at least for large cemeteries.

A quick Google search reveals boneyards called Oak Hill in Washington, D.C.; Cincinnati; San Jose; Clear Lake, Illinois; Bramwell, West Virginia; Griffin, Georgia; Evansville, Indiana; Lawrence, Kansas; and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where the creator of Dungeons & Dragons, one Ernest Gary Gygax, reposes.

And more. One of which is the municipal Oak Hill Cemetery in Janesville, Wisconsin.Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville

It’s a sizable cemetery, about 85 acres, with 24,000 or so permanent residents. I took a look fairly early on Sunday, July 2. The grounds aren’t quite hilly, but they do slope a good bit, with old trees — and some oaks — and a good variety of standing stones.Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville

Some older stones, as befitting a place founded in 1851. Many of them have that headstone tilt that comes with time.Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville

A well-placed veterans’ section.Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville

And a handsome chapel.Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville

Recently restored, I’ve read, the chapel dates from 1899. The cemetery was already well established by then as a more obscure, but nevertheless good example of a 19th-century rural cemetery.

Burlington Cemetery

About a two-minute drive from downtown Burlington, Wisconsin is the Burlington Cemetery.Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin

Showing brown patches a few weeks ago, signs of the dry spell still persistent in late June.Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin

Still, it was pleasant that warm but not hot Sunday afternoon, with an assortment of stones standing mute — standing being an important aspect for an aesthetic cemetery.Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin

Including a Woodman of the World memorial. Unless he was a freemason. Quite possibly both.Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin

Something to know: “Effective June 1, 2015, Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Society adopted the service mark WoodmenLife in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” a Woodmen of the World press release reported about eight years ago.

“The process began with the release of a 2011 nationwide survey by the American Fraternal Alliance and Frederick Polls, which showed that many people are unfamiliar with fraternal organizations and what they accomplish. Additional research found that a large portion of the United States was unfamiliar with Woodmen of the World.”

The only reason I know about them are the gravestones, which you see periodically if you visit enough cemeteries. The org clearly needs a catchy theme song. “The Lumberjack Song”?

At Burlington there are few large memorials, as is usual in small towns. The Civil War memorial is sizable and elegant, though. And ready for the Fourth of July.Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin

As were more modest memorials.Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin

There are GAR stars.Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin

Something less often seen: a Woman’s Relief Corps star.Burlington Cemetery, Wisconsin

Unlike the GAR, the WRC is still around, even though it was originally formed as a woman’s auxiliary to the GAR. Its next national convention is on Saturday. I’m not going, but that’s good to know somehow.

Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California

Not long ago, I refreshed my memory about what a hilly cemetery can look like.Dayton, Ohio Dayton, Ohio

Those are images of the Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum in Dayton, Ohio. Been a while since I was there (2016), but it’s still a favorite of mine.

I thought about Woodland and some of the other park-like cemeteries of the nation while on the slopes of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California last month. The Forest Lawn slopes are arrayed with stones flush to the ground, to facilitate lawn care.Forest Lawn, Glendale Forest Lawn, Glendale

Such beauty in its hills and landscape – and such a missed opportunity for a beautiful cemetery. There are spots of beauty, but still. Flush stones, with their numbing sameness, don’t enhance a hill the way a wide variety of standing stones do. Not at all. Not only that, traces of individuality are regularly removed, as a crew is doing in the second picture above.

Even so, Forest Lawn is an interesting place. For one thing, it’s the cemetery that inspired Evelyn Waugh to produce The Loved One, his sharp satire of the American way of death, or maybe just the California way of death. I read the book about 35 years ago, I think, and don’t remember much. I saw the awful movie based on it at some point, and am glad I don’t remember much about it except, vaguely, Jonathan Winters hamming it up, as he usually did.

Looking at the trailer, I realize now how solid the cast is. I’m surprised how much talent went to waste in that movie.

“When Evelyn Waugh came to Hollywood in 1947 to discuss the film rights for Brideshead Revisited, he visited a graveyard: Forest Lawn Memorial Park,” notes Crisis Magazine. “He had heard it praised as a place unsurpassed in beauty, taste, and sensitivity; a place where ‘faith and consolation, religion and art had been brought to their highest possible association.’ But Mr. Waugh found the cemetery dripping with saccharine sentimentality, edged with macabre memorials, and repellent with cuteness.”

I don’t know about all that; I might have a higher tolerance for sentimentality or the macabre or even cuteness than the author, though I have to say that Forest Lawn doesn’t really trade in the macabre, unless you consider cemeteries by definition macabre, which I do not. If anything, it could use just a touch of macabre to tone its memorial-park lightness down a notch.

The park is expansive, its map full of named places: Inspiration Slope, Garden of Ascension, Haven of Peace, Memory Slope, Triumphant Faith Gardens, Gardens of Remembrance, Columbarium of the Christus, Court of David, Court of Freedom, Garden of Honor, Garden of Everlasting Peace, Garden of the Mystery of Life, Gardens of Contemplation, Dawn of Tomorrow Wall Crypts, Vale of Faith, Resurrection Slope, Rest Haven, Graceland, Vesperland, Slumberland, Lullabyland and Babyland, among others.Forest Lawn, Glendale Forest Lawn, Glendale

One thing not on the map is any mention of any of the movie stars buried in the cemetery, or any hint about where they might be. There are many. That’s an odd lacuna, I think, considering this is southern California and that Hollywood Forever makes a point of highlighting the famous, and does it so well with a detailed map.

A handful of famed names appeared on Google Maps at specific points in the cemetery, including Humphrey Bogart. I wasn’t far away, so I went looking for him. I wanted to pay my respects to Bogart. (I’ve seen his hand- and footprints, too.)

Soon I determined that Bogie’s ashes are behind this door to the Columbarium of Eternal Light.Forest Lawn, Glendale Forest Lawn, Glendale

A locked door. No casual admission to see one of the great actors of his time. Or Bacall, who joined him not so long ago. “Golden Key of Memory”?

I had to content myself with stones and niches of random folk.Forest Lawn, Glendale Forest Lawn, Glendale

There’s also an art museum on the grounds, which was closed when I visited, so I had to content myself with some of the freestanding public art on the grounds. There’s quite a bit of that.

A version of the Christus.Forest Lawn, Glendale Forest Lawn, Glendale

The Court of Freedom, which has a patriotic theme, is ringed with artwork. Such as the Declaration of Independence mural.Forest Lawn, Glendale Forest Lawn, Glendale

George Washington.Forest Lawn, Glendale

The chain in front of him tells a story I’d never heard.Forest Lawn, Glendale

A version of “The Republic” by Daniel Chester French.Forest Lawn Glendale

I don’t count the statue of Washington as a presidential site for this trip, but there was one at the cemetery I did see: the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather, a lovely spot.Forest Lawn Glendale
Forest Lawn Glendale Forest Lawn Glendale Forest Lawn Glendale

Couples are frequently married at the Wee Kirk, as you’d image. In early 1940, Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman were married there.

South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

Across the Vermilion River from Chautauqua Park in Pontiac, Illinois, is South Side Cemetery, which predates the town’s Chautauqua activity by some decades, since its first burials were in 1856. At 24 acres, it’s still an active municipal burial ground. I saw at least two memorials with death dates in 2023.

Overall, a nice place for a stroll on a warm day in May, if you don’t mind being in a cemetery. I can’t say I ever have been.South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

Some older stones, including a scattering of Civil War veterans.South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

As usual with small towns, not many mausoleums or large monuments, but there are a few.South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

Lemuel G. Cairns fought for the Union, too, but has no ordinary soldier’s stone. According to Find a Grave, he achieved the rank of sergeant and after the war dealt in cattle in Texas, before moving to Illinois. I suspect he did well in that business in Texas, but maybe got tired of the heat.

The only sizable mausoleum I spotted.South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

A number of Gaylords reside there, including this fellow, it seems, a doctor and Union veteran.

This is a surname you don’t see much: Hercules. Also, an unusual design for a stone.South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

Rare, but not unknown.

“Early examples of the surname recording taken from surviving church registers include those of William Hercules (also recorded as Herculus) at the church of St Margaret’s Westminster, on January 16th 1603, and in the Shetlands, William Herculason who married Christian Harryson at Delting, on January 24th 1752,” says the Internet Surname Database.

A prominent Pontiac family, no doubt. With a name like that, they’d better be. One of them – J.W. Hercules – is mentioned as the designer of the Pontiac Chautauqua pavilion.