Two Fairbanks Cemeteries

Posted on August 11, 2021 by admin

Bound to miss the Perseids again tonight. A thunderstorm is supposed to roll through tonight — third night in a row here — and besides, metro Chicago is no place to see celestial phenomena very well, except maybe a bright moon or planet.

I visited two major Fairbanks cemeteries during my late July visit, in reverse chronological order. First I went to Birch Hill Cemetery, founded in 1938 as an alternative to Clay Street Cemetery closer to downtown, which was founded simultaneously with the settlement itself in 1903.

As the name implies, Birch Hill is on a hill. In our time, the hill overlooks the Steese Highway, where it meets the Johansen Expressway. At that particular junction are such major retailers as Home Depot, Costco, Fred Meyer, REI and Walgreen’s, so the traffic is relatively heavy and the cemetery relatively noisy. You get used to that.

Though they aren’t on this interesting list, I imagine that those Home Depot and Costco locations are the northernmost of the respective chains.

I tromped around Birch Hill for a good half hour.

The cemetery included a number of special sections, such as Pioneers Plot 1.

In that section, there (unsurprisingly) are old stones.

And newer markers for people who came to Fairbanks in its pioneer years, such as one Joseph Landers, who died “About 80” in 1936. He might have come when he was about 50 already; couldn’t have been too much earlier. Must have been a tough old bird.

The memorial, which is obviously newer than 1936, says it was put there by Igloo No. 4. Eh? I looked it up. That’s the Fairbanks lodge of the the Pioneers of Alaska.

The Pioneers’ web site says: “[The organization was] first organized in Nome on February 14, 1907, with the mission:

To preserve the names of Alaska’s pioneers on its rolls;
To collect and preserve the literature and incidents of Alaska’s history;
And to promote the best interests of Alaska.”

That seems to include fixing plaques to Alaska pioneer graves, presumably unmarked or whose markers had been ravaged by the northern climate. There were others besides Mr. Landers in Pioneer Plot 1.

Loyal Order of Moose are on the hill, too.

Along with unusual gravesites whose honorees may or may not have belonged to a fraternal organization, such as A.A. Zimmerman, whom the plaque says donated the land for the cemetery.

A few days later, I made my way to the Clay Street Cemetery, which is tucked away in a residential neighborhood near downtown Fairbanks.

It’s a flat parcel, but not without its charms.

Igloo No. 4 put in a few memorials here, too.

Other individual graves. Pioneer women, in these cases.

This plaque, dedicated in 2002, lists 89 men, mostly buried in the cemetery, who died in gold mining accidents near Fairbanks from 1905 to 1918.

“Underground mining was dangerous during this pioneer era,” the plaque says. “Most died from cave-ins, falling down shafts, being struck by material while in a shaft, and gas asphyxiation. The miners were often young, single, foreign-born ‘pick and shovel’ laborers. They were far from home.”

Further Considerations About Sock Monkeys (And Long Grove Community Church & Cemetery)

Posted on July 8, 2021 by admin

Rockford, Illinois, is generally credited with creating the modern sock monkey, and more recently fiberglass sock monkeys were put on display there. There are even sock monkeys at the Midway Village Museum in Rockford.

So how is it Long Grove is getting a sock monkey museum? I’ve only done cursory research, the kind the subject deserves, and I haven’t found a connection. I like to think the Long Grove museum will be run by a breakaway sock monkey faction, rivals of the sock monkey orthodoxy in Rockford, but that’s just me amusing myself.

A short distance from Long Grove’s historic downtown is Long Grove Community Church, which is historic in its own right, built by Evangelical German immigrants in the 1840s.

“With a new century, came many changes,” the church’s web site says, referring to the 20th century. “The church widened her circle of ministry to include local people who were not German-speaking. Two denominational mergers took the church away from her Evangelical roots.

“By 1950, the church had grown so small that the denomination recommended the doors be closed. But God gave the people a vision. Instead of closing their doors, they built Sunday School rooms for children. As people migrated from the city to the suburbs, the area grew and so did the church. By the late 1960s, we had transitioned from a small rural church into a suburban church.”

The Long Grove Cemetery is next to the church.

There isn’t much information on line about this cemetery, despite its clear historic aspects.

But I don’t need a web site to tell me it’s another of the many cemeteries in the Chicago area with immigrant German stones, many dating from the 19th century.

Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo

Posted on June 10, 2021 by admin

The UB Council of the University of New York at Buffalo, in its wisdom, has effaced the name of President Millard Fillmore from the institution, which he also founded. Fillmore himself, however, will remain undisturbed for now at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo. Also in the Fillmore family plot are his two wives, his children and one of his mother-in-laws.

The 13th President of the United States is one of about 152,000 permanent residents of Forest Lawn. The cemetery is a splendid example of the Victorian rural cemetery movement, realized in thickets of headstones and a profusion of funerary art and ornate mausoleums inhabiting a lush landscape of grass underfoot and leaves overhead (in the warmer months, anyway). I arrived just after opening on the morning of May 31. I only had time for a slice of the place.

Spanning over 269 acres, Forest Lawn was founded in 1849, and is home to early Buffalo politicos, businessmen, artists, musicians, lawyers, doctors, inventors, a wife of Irving Berlin, the mother of Aretha Franklin, and 17 unknown victims of the Angola Horror train wreck of 1867. Frank Lloyd Wright designed a mausoleum for the cemetery that wasn’t built until 2004 and there’s a statue of Seneca Indian chief Red Jacket dating from 1851.

Lorenzo Dimick (1842-1888) might have been a criminal in Buffalo who evaded justice by fleeing to Canada, but in death there was no problem for him to return to his native city for burial under a fine piece of funerary art.

A squib about him is here. I am able to read the full story in the NYT archives, so I will relay that he committed insurance fraud in Buffalo, was duly convicted, and skipped town. Good thing for him a border was handy, presumably before cooperation between the United States and Canada in such matters. Or maybe some bribery went down.

The Firemen of Buffalo and Erie County are honored with a statue and a plaque.
The Schickel memorial. From what I’ve been able to tell, Bernhard Schickel (1820-1884) owned a beer hall. That could get you the dosh you need to pay for such finery in stone.

The Blocher Memorial is the kind of array that gets its own articles.

“The story of Nelson W. Blocher combines fact and folklore,” begins Atlas Obscura, which is to say we don’t know everything, or even very much for sure. “Local legend claims…” only affirms that further.

“Within the structure, enclosed by glass, are Italian Carrara marble statues depicting a romanticized scene of Blocher’s final moments. Blocher himself lies on a sarcophagus slab, clutching his Bible, while his parents look on,” AO says. “Above Blocher is an angel (possibly modeled after [his lost love] Katherine) who watches over him, or, perhaps calls him to heaven.”

Near a creek that runs through the cemetery —

— is a bust of Verdi. Hm. I didn’t think was buried here, and he isn’t. He’s at the Casa di Riposi per Musicisti in Milan.

The table says:

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

Giuseppe Verdi is credited with having invented the Italian national operatic style. Born the son of a poor grocer in LeBoncole, Italy, Verdi began composing at age 13… His best known works include Rigoletto, Aida, Il Trovalore and La Traviata.

Forest Lawn thanks the City of Buffalo, Buffalo Arts Commission and the Federation of Italian American Societies for this bust sculpted by Dr. Antonio Ugo of Palermo, Italy… It is dedicated this 28th day of September, 1996, in tribute to the many accomplishments of the Italian-American community in this cemetery, the City of Buffalo, and all of Western New York.

Along the Niagara Gorge

Posted on June 3, 2021 by admin

What’s within walking distance of Niagara Falls State Park if you want a (relatively) inexpensive lunch? There’s a food court in an ugly building, but also Zaika Indian Cuisine, Taste of Nepal and Punjabi Hut on streets near the park, all of which speak to fairly recent immigration in this corner of western NY. When honeymooners visited Niagara in the early 20th century, or even most of the rest of the century, those were surely not options. We had the buffet on Saturday at Punjabi Hut, which was pretty good.

Afterwards, we spent a little more time at the park riding the Niagara Scenic Trolley, whose route was shortened during the pandemic, and then headed north by car on the Niagara Scenic Parkway. The road is fairly short — 18 miles or so — and goes from the town of Niagara Falls to Lake Ontario, but it is definitely scenic, except for the section that passes by the New York Power Authority plant on the river. Just north of the falls the parkway follows the river fairly closely.

The road was known as the Robert Moses Scenic Parkway until about five years ago. Looks like Confederate memorials aren’t the only ones getting the boot these days. So are those honoring urban planners with a taste for neighborhood-impinging expressways. (And what’s to become of this state park on Long Island? Time will tell.)

North of the town of Lewiston, the parkway still follows the river, but at a remove of a mile or so. It’s pretty enough, but I understand that the Niagara Parkway on the Canadian side, which follows the river quite closely, is the prettier drive. But one goes where one can go.

First stop: Whirlpool State Park. The intense current of the Niagara River rushes to this point and forms a enormous whirlpool at a bend. Been quite a while since I’ve had a good look at a natural whirlpool which, despite the name, looks like a choppy patch of water rather than the thing you see in a drain.

The view upriver. In the distance is the Rainbow Bridge. As I’ve said, nothing is very far from anything else in this part of New York state.

The flow into the whirlpool.

The whirlpool.

It doesn’t look like a particularly safe place for boats, but that doesn’t keep tourists from venturing there under the command of “highly skilled captains.” I’d hope so. I don’t know whether the jetboats are running now. We didn’t see any. The cable car that dangles over the whirlpool, the Whirlpool Aero Car, and which launches from the Canadian side, looked immobile, still shut for the pandemic.

Then there’s the story of Capt. Joel Robinson, skipper of the Maid of the Mist in 1861, who shot the Niagara rapids and whirlpool. Niagara Falls Info tells the story:

“In 1861, due to a financial crisis and the American Civil War, the Maid of the Mist was sold at public auction to a Canadian company. The deal would go through if the boat could be delivered to Lake Ontario. To get to Lake Ontario, the Maid of the Mist had to be navigated through the Great Gorge Rapids, the Whirlpool, and the Lower Rapids.

“On June 6th 1861, 53-year-old Captain Joel Robinson undertook this risky mission along with two deck hands…[McIntyre and Jones]. With both shores lined with onlookers, Captain Robinson and crew rode the Maid of the Mist into one of the world’s most wild and dangerous whitewater rapids.

“The first giant wave that struck the boat threw Robinson and McIntyre to the floor of the wheel house. It also tore the smoke stack from the boat and Jones was thrown to the floor of the engine room. The tiny boat was now at the mercy of the massive waves crashing against it. The boat was carried at approximately 63 km/h through the rock strewn rapids. Soon the Maid of the Mist was propelled into the Whirlpool where Captain Robinson was able to regain control of the boat.

“Captain Robinson had great difficulty maneuvering the Maid of the Mist from the grip of the Whirlpool… The 5 kilometre journey through the rapids and the Whirlpool was well executed, although they lost the smoke stack. Captain Robinson was the first person to accomplish the impossible [obviously not, just difficult] task of taking a boat through the dangerous waters.

“The frightening experience of this journey caused Captain Robinson to give up a career that he loved. He retired into near seclusion and died two years later at the age of 55.”

In modern terms, sounds like he suffered from PTSD. In 19th-century terms, I figure people said he was spooked by the ordeal. No mention of the aftermath for the deck hands.

Not long after visiting Whirlpool State Park, we spend a while in the pleasant town of Lewiston, New York, whose equally pleasant riverfront isn’t at the top of a gorge, but at river level. Not far from the river is the Freedom Crossing Monument, an ensemble of bronzes by Susan Geissler commemorating those escaped slaves who crossed into Canada.
Elsewhere in Lewiston is the variously named Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park, or Earl W. Brydges State Artpark, or simply the Artpark, a venue for summertime musical entertainment. It also includes some other standard features of a park, such as playground equipment and picnic tables, as well as an Indian mound. I expect there haven’t been any events there in more than a year, but maybe that will pick up soon.

All very interesting, but what struck me was the parking lot. It’s large and undistinguished except for the paintings on its surface. When I pulled into the lot, I took them for children’s chalk drawings, maybe left over from a kids’ event, but soon I noticed they were paintings, and extensive in scope across the lot.

More parking lots such be decorated like this. The end of the line for the Niagara Scenic Parkway is near Old Fort Niagara State Historic Site, which overlooks the mouth of the river on Lake Ontario. The fort itself, which is ringed by an iron fence, was closed by the time we got there. But the rest of the grounds were open. While Yuriko napped in the car, I looked around.

The Old Fort Niagara lighthouse.
This particular light dates from 1871, but the fort had more primitive lights much earlier than that, ca. 1781, which count as the first lights on the Great Lakes.

The old fort also has an old cemetery. Small, but a dignified spot for those who died during here the War of 1812. The fort was scene of a bloody bit of business during that dimly remembered war. Good to see that the stones were ready for Decoration Day.Erected to the memory of unknown soldiers and sailors of the United States killed in action or dying of wounds in this vicinity during the War of 1812.

Even More Peoria: The Cathedral of St. Mary, The Great Agnostic & The Bolshevik Cookie Monster

Posted on May 6, 2021 by admin

Near downtown Peoria is the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, mother church of the Diocese of Peoria, completed in 1889 and restored in the 2010s. I was able to catch it resplendent in the full eastern sun on a Sunday morning, before it opened for mass.

The adjacent cathedral rectory and, on the lower level, the diocesan chancery.

Other details, including a statue of Mother Teresa.

Later, we popped inside just before the beginning of mass. The interior is just as grand as the outside.

The cathedral isn’t the only church in the neighborhood. Not far away is Christian Assembly Church.

West of there looked to be a hill made of buildings.

This is at the base of that “hill.”

The Irving School was the Peoria School District’s oldest school, built in 1898, when it closed in 2012.

“Irving and Peoria City Hall are the city’s only two representations of the architecturally significant Flemish Renaissance design,” noted the Journal Star at the time. What are the odds that I’d see both of them on the same morning during a ramble in Peoria? Not bad, actually, since Peoria isn’t that large.

Looks like it’s being redeveloped, to judge by the construction truck. The buildings on the hill, incidentally, form the OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, the largest hospital in metro Peoria.

Last time we went to Peoria, we visited the Springdale Cemetery. Next to it is the Peoria Zoo, Luthy Botanical Gardens and Glen Oak Park. This time we stopped for a few minutes at the entrance of that park, which happens to be on Dan Fogelberg Parkway.

We went there because I want to see the statue of the Great Agnostic. I’m glad to see that the artist — no other than Fritz Triebel — wasn’t trying to hide the man’s portliness. That was insurance against 19th-century wasting diseases, anyway.

If I ever knew it, I’d forgotten that Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-99) spent much of his adult life in Peoria, though he lived other places, such as Shawneetown (before it was Old Swaneetown). He’s not buried in Illinois, however, but Arlington National Cemetery, as befits the commander of the 11th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry of the Union Army.

I can’t remember how I first heard of him, but it was in high school. He’s another of those interesting public intellectuals who’s been completely forgotten, which would be almost all of them. Forgotten except by his hometown, though I expect most Peorians don’t know who he was either.

While driving on I-74 just west of downtown, I saw a sign pointing to an individual’s grave nearby — a rare thing, now that I think about it. The individual was Susan G. Komen. I was still by myself at that point, so there was no one to object to checking out yet another cemetery.

She’s in a niche in Parkview Cemetery.

It occurred to me as I read the nearby plaque that I knew nothing about her, except that her name is attached to the breast cancer foundation. She died from the disease in 1980 at age 36. It was her sister, Nancy G. Brinker, who established the foundation.

Later Nancy Brinker was U.S. ambassador to Hungary, early in Bush the younger’s administration, a job I expect she got since she and her husband, the inordinately successful chain restaurateur Norman Brinker, were serious donors to the Bush campaign. (Seems she also had enough pull to have a sign put up directing people to her sister’s memorial.)

Parkview is pleasant enough, but not nearly as picturesque as Springdale. Still, I found an interesting but probably informal section where a good many Greeks or people of Greek ancestry are buried.

This structure says, 1931 American Greek Society Homer on top. Below it says, Erected by Charter Members, with a list of names of a distinctly Hellenic cast.

The afternoon we arrived in Peoria, we were driving along Adams Street not far from downtown when suddenly we saw the famed (well, 15 minutes) Cookie Monster mural. Imagine my delight. I had to stop to take pictures of that.

The mural got national attention late last year. As reported, the story was that a mysterious man (Fake Nate) paid an artist (Joshua Hawkins) to do the mural, claiming he was the building’s owner. The real owner (Real Nate) came back from a Thanksgiving trip to find the mural, and expressed outrage. The artist said he’d been tricked, too. Then Real Nate painted over the mural. Fake Nate’s identity and motive — and there must have been a strong one, since Hawkins reported being paid “a lot” in cash for the work — remained elusive.

It’s an odd story. But soon I’d forgotten that the small building, which is absolutely nondescript in every other way, was in Peoria. When I saw the mural, I remembered.
But wait — wasn’t it painted over? Whitewashed is more like it, since spring rains had clearly removed most of the covering, rendering Bolshevik Cookie Monster visible again.

As I stood across the street taking pictures, a stubby, wrinkled, gray-haired man got out of his car not far away and tried to enter a small bar on my side of the street. He found it closed.

“It’s closed,” he said to me, heading back toward his car.

“What’s the deal with that?” I asked, pointing toward the mural.

“It’s some kind of joke,” he said, and related a bit of the reported story. But then he expressed skepticism that it really happened that way. Rather, he suspected, the artist and the property owner cooked up the story to help sell the building — which, I read later, the owner did not long ago — and help get the artist some attention, too.

That’s certainly plausible. There’s no doubt that the artist is capitalizing on it. If it didn’t involve paying $35 ($25 for the item, $10 for shipping), I’d consider buying a t-shirt with the mural on it, as offered at the artist’s web site along with other merch. (That’s too much for any t-shirt.)

Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. It’s an inspired bit of whimsy. Мир, земля, печенье (Peace, Land, Cookies) is a play on the Bolshevik slogan, Мир, земля, хлеб (Peace, Land, Bread), and there is a touch of early red propaganda poster to the thing.

If the new building owner, and the city of Peoria, has any sense, they’ll keep the mural. Restore it, in fact. Besides being funny, at least to some of us, it’s a distinct thing to be found there and absolutely nowhere else.

Boneyards Along the Way

Posted on April 29, 2021 by admin

On the second day of my recent trip, as I was leaving Carbondale, Illinois, I spotted the small but pretty (and unimaginatively named) Woodlawn Cemetery. Founded in 1854, it’s two years older than the city. Everything was wet from the heavy rain the night before.

There are a number of Civil War graves.

“In April, 1866, three Carbondale-area Civil War veterans… proposed that the community… gather on the last Sunday of April to honor their fallen comrades and neighbors, by cleaning and decorating their graves,” says the cemetery’s nomination for the National Register of Historic Places.

“On the appointed day, April 29, more than 200 veterans plus approximately 4,000 area citizens gathered at Woodlawn Cemetery… Gen. John A. Logan addressed the assemblage.”

Evidently, this and later commemorations deeply impressed Logan, who on May 5, 1868, issued GAR General Order No. 11.

The 30th day of May, 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land…

While visiting Clarksdale, Mississippi, I spent a few minutes at Heavenly Rest Cemetery.

In the background are two buildings of First Baptist Missionary Baptist Church (1918), historic in its own right.

At Vicksburg National Military Park is the 116-acre Vicksburg National Cemetery, which holds the remains of 17,000 Union soldiers, a higher concentration than any other cemetery, according to the NPS.

“After the creation of Vicksburg National Cemetery [in 1866], extensive efforts were made by the War Department to locate the remains of Union soldiers originally buried throughout the southeast in the areas occupied by Federal forces during the campaign and siege of Vicksburg — namely, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. However, by the time of these re-interments many of the wooden markers had been lost to the elements, and identification of many of the soldiers was rendered impossible.

“Nationwide, 54% of the number re-interred were classified as ‘unknown.’ At Vicksburg National Cemetery, 75% of the Civil War dead are listed as unknowns…”

The cemetery is closed to burials now, but after the Civil War a number of later servicemen were buried there, including the curious story of Flight Sgt. Edgar Horace Hawter of the Royal Australian Air Force, re-interred there in 1949 from New Guinea.

“Confederate dead from the Vicksburg campaign originally buried behind Confederate lines have now been re-interred in the Vicksburg City Cemetery (Cedar Hill Cemetery), in an area called Soldiers’ Rest,” the NPS says. “Approximately 5,000 Confederates have been re-interred there, of which 1,600 are identified.”

Cedar Hill Cemetery wasn’t hard to find.

Most of the cemetery isn’t Soldiers’ Rest.

Most of the stones are modest, but there are a few larger ones.

Evergreen Cemetery in Paris, Texas, was green enough, and wet with recent rain when I arrived there on April 16.

As a veteran of the Texas Revolution, Dr. Patrick W. Birmingham (1808-1867) rates a Texas flag.

Another plaque told me that Jesus in Cowboy Boots was part of a memorial at Evergreen, but maddingly it didn’t offer any direction about where such a thing would be found. So I did what we moderns do, and did a Google Image search for that term. I got an image easily.

Turned out I was practically standing next to it.

It was a little hard to make out at first, but yes, it does look like that figure is wearing boots rather than, say, sandals. It’s not clear it’s actually a depiction of Jesus, but as Atlas Obscura points out, the name has stuck.

Springdale Cemetery

Posted on April 7, 2021 by admin

The afternoon was getting long in the tooth in Peoria last Saturday, but I told Ann there was one more place I wanted to go before we proceeded to the highway out of town. Yes, of course, was her mild reaction.

The minor delay was entirely worth it, as far as I was concerned. We soon found ourselves at the entrance to Springdale Cemetery, a wooded, hilly, well-populated stretch of land where gravediggers first turned their shovels in the late 1850s. Roads lead off in various directions through this enormous place, a rare example of a rural cemetery movement cemetery that still retains a rural feeling, even though the city of Peoria is all around.

Springdale isn’t over-thick with stones, though there are plenty. It isn’t thick with sizable memorials, though a few rise over the others.

Deeper in the 223-acre cemetery are rows of soldiers’ stones, beginning with those who fought to save the Union and peppered with later participants in later wars.

Even deeper in, the forest becomes as thick as any I’ve seen in a cemetery. In early April, the trees are still bare, but it won’t be long. The warm air was alive with birdcalls while the din of city traffic — so much part of a “rural cemetery” in our time — was far in the background.

We saw just a handful of mausoleums. I suspect there most be more in other parts of Springdale, since Peoria had a long stint as a prosperous industrial town, and that’s the kind of thing that captains of industry used to buy for themselves. But we only had time for the handful.

Zotz was a German newspaper publisher. The mausoleum door isn’t original. In fact, it’s a recently created trompe l’oeil.

Nearby were more modest, but still compelling stones. About 78,000 people lie in Springdale.

A gorgeous place, all in all. One that would be worth seeing during the seasons other than spring, I believe.

Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, Bourbonnais

Posted on March 24, 2021 by admin

While visiting Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais on Sunday afternoon, I spotted a church building from a distance that I took to be the campus chapel or the like. I decided to drive over to its parking lot for a closer look.I was wrong. It was Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, which is decidedly not part of ONU, though adjacent to it for historic reasons that I will get into.“The original Maternity BVM Catholic Church, a 110-foot-by-50-foot wood-framed structure, had burned to the ground in September 1853,” Jack Klasey wrote in the Daily Journal, a local paper. “The frame church had been built in 1847 to replace the settlement’s first Catholic house of worship, a small log structure known as the church of St. Leo. The log church had been erected in 1841.

“Like many of his parishioners, [Rev. Isadore Lebel] had been born in Canada. The plan that he brought to Bourbonnais Grove reflected the church architecture of his native Quebec province. It is believed to be based upon a church in Cap-St.-Ignace, located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, a short distance downstream from Quebec City… Construction work was probably begun some time in 1855 or 1856 and not completed until 1858.”

I was certain the building would be locked (as it was, too bad), but I got out the car for a look anyway. Then I noticed a patch of land next to and behind the church that seemed worth investigating.
A grotto.

Maternity BVM has an informative walking tour on its web site for downloading. The centerpiece of the grotto, it tells me, is a shrine built to Our Lady of Lourdes.

“Br. John Koelzer, a Viatorian brother, began building the grotto just over 100 years ago, in 1915. It took three years to complete [and] is fashioned (using stones carved by local residents) in the image of Our Lady of Lourdes, when she appeared to young Bernadette.

“Over the years, she has interceded for the safety of soldiers as far back as World War I, as well as countless school children, bridal couples, rosary groups and worshippers of all ages who have sought her protection.”

The Viatorians — another group I’d never heard of till I researched a place I’d been — are “an international Roman Catholic religious congregation comprised of priests, brothers and lay associates, headquartered in Arlington Heights, IL. Collectively, the congregation is known as the Viatorian Community.”

“Fr. Louis Querbes (1793-1859) founded the congregation in Vourles, France in the 19th century during the years following the French Revolution. Realizing the need to provide education for youth, Fr. Querbes’ vision was to send religious brothers and lay catechists of deep faith and competent learning to parish schools in the countryside.

“As patron saint of the congregation, Fr. Querbes chose St. Viator, a young, 4th century catechist-lector of the cathedral church of Lyons, France.”

True to their education focus, the Viatorians who found their way to Bourbonnais from Canada set up a school that became St. Viator College in 1868. The Depression put an end to the school, however, and the site was sold to Olivet Nazarene University.

The church and the grotto remain. As does a cemetery on the grounds. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Now take a look around the cemetery/grotto and you will also notice several headstones scattered throughout the space,” the tour says. “The cemetery was opened near St. Leo’s Chapel in 1842. By 1884, the old graveyard had no more empty spaces as hundreds are buried here. Many of the grave markers have deteriorated over the years, but there are approximately 30 headstones that still exist and have legible engravings. The earliest legible burial was David Spink, 1848.”

Deteriorated indeed.
Elsewhere on the grounds is a sundial.

When I stood in front of the sundial, it was about 3:30 CDT, or 2:30 by the sun, a time I could have indeed told by the shadow. The sundial was a gift from the St. Viator College Class of 1917, dedicated on June 13 of that year. Eleven members of that class are listed on the sundial plaque, including the class treasurer, Fulton J. Sheen. He had quite a career ahead of him, with influence in unexpected places.

Near the entrance of the grounds is a boulder with a plaque askew.

The plaque has been in place almost exactly 100 years, having been dedicated on Decoration Day, 1921. It honors the aforementioned “sturdy Viatorian pioneers” (the plaque’s term) who founded St. Viator College.

Just as we were about to leave — I was already back in the car — I spotted yet another plaque, one considerably harder to see, under a bush. In spring or summer, it might be impossible to see.
“I have to see one more thing,” I told my family. They’re used to that kind of thing. But I knew if I ignored it, I’d wonder about it later. I was well rewarded by my curiosity, since the plaque made me smile. It wasn’t anything remotely like I expected.
A home plate memorial. Listen closely on moonless nights, maybe, and you can hear the faint cheers of late 19th-century Catholic collegians playing base ball.

Cemeteries Along Archer Avenue

Posted on March 17, 2021 by admin

First of all, just about any search for information about Resurrection Catholic Cemetery & Mausoleums in Justice, Illinois, is going to turn up a reference to Resurrection Mary, a ghost purported to hitch rides along Archer Avenue, or in one version I read, go dancing with a living man at a dance hall that used to be on that road. Afterward, he gives her a ride back to her home — which turns out to be Resurrection, as the poor lass had died in a car crash at some earlier time.

The vanishing hitchhiker story, in other words. So well known that that’s the title of Jan Harold Brunvand’s book on urban legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, which I read in the ’80s, along with a lot of other people. If I remember right, the story has been attested back to the 19th century, when it involved a horse-drawn wagon rather than an automobile, and I suspect — with their high-quality roads, wagons and belief in spooks — the Romans must have told a similar story.

What’s the enduring appeal? Can’t say. Also can’t say that I take it any more seriously than it deserves, which isn’t much, though it is an element in Resurrection’s sense of place, so that’s something.

I arrived at Resurrection early in the afternoon on Saturday. At once I noticed that it was a busy place. Maybe the busiest cemetery I’ve been to since we went to Arlington National in ’11. I counted no fewer than six funerals going on during the hour or so I was there, plus a lot of other people simply visiting graves. It was a good day for a visit.

It’s an expansive Catholic cemetery founded in 1904, with about 190,000 permanent residents resting across 400 acres, so I was able to stay at a distance from everyone else. Not particularly for health reasons, but because as a cemetery tourist it’s important not to bother people during more somber visits. Usually it isn’t much of any issue.

Resurrection is a curious mix of a cemetery. Parts of it are thick with upright stones, while other parts feature mostly include flush-to-the-ground plaques, though memorials of both kinds can be found in every section. The cemetery has a scattering of trees and is almost completely flat, except for undeveloped places where piles of soil exist as a byproduct of large landscaping efforts.

There is still a fair amount of unpopulated land, since the Catholic Church is nothing if not an organization that plans centuries ahead. There is also a sizable belt of wetlands near the edge of the property, full of reeds, that I suspect will never be developed, and which probably counts as the cemetery’s effort to be green.

The cemetery’s indoor mausoleum features the world’s largest stained glass window, at least according to Roadside America, with 2,448 panels telling Bible stories. That surely would have been a sight to see.

As soon as I parked next to the building, however, I noticed a line of cars snaking along the road I had just driven to get there. Sure enough, it was a funeral procession headed for the mausoleum, so I made myself scarce and didn’t make it back later. Another time, maybe, since the place does look to be a midcentury tour-de-force.

Instead I spent some time at one of the outdoor mausoleum complexes.

No stained glass, but there are mosaics of Biblical scenes on some of the walls of niches. I’d never seen anything quite like that.

Though not thick with funerary art like some grand old rural cemeteries, there is some at Resurrection. New-looking works especially, the likes of which can probably be ordered online. Yep.

This statue marks a small section devoted to the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Third Order of Saint Francis, a group I’d never heard of. They’re still around.

One large work of art, a bronze of St. John Paul II, has its own Roadside America entry, which — in typical RA style — calls it the “20-Foot-Tall Pope.”
“In 1969 and again in 1976, before he became Pope John Paul II, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Kracow [sic], walked the grounds of Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois,” the cemetery web site notes. “In 1969, the Cardinal visited Resurrection Cemetery to see and bless the Polish Millennium Shrine honoring the 1000th anniversary (966 – 1966) of Christianity in Poland.

“On Memorial Day, May 30th, 2016, Archbishop Cupich blessed a 20 foot tall bronze statue of Saint Pope John Paul II that’s placed on an eight foot tall American black granite base located in Resurrection Cemetery directly behind the cemetery’s office building.

“Commissioned by the Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2013 and designed by Teresa Clark of Clark Design[, the] statue weighs approximately 8,000 pounds and rests upon a black granite base of 86,000 pounds.”

Good to take note of monumental things at a cemetery, but also to pay attention to some of the more human-sized stories that the stones and other memorials clearly allude to.

Such as recent bereavement. Not far from John Paul.

In the thick of other stones.

Found on the grounds of the outdoor mausoleum.

Resurrection wasn’t the only cemetery on Archer Avenue I saw on Saturday. Next to it is another large burial ground, Bethania, which is nonsectarian, and looked crowded with upright stones. I didn’t have the energy for it.

I did take a drive through the rolling terrain of Fairmount-Willow Hills Memorial Park, which is also on Archer Avenue, though in the village of Willow Hills. Most of its memorials are flush to the ground, though there are upright ones. Overall, that gives an impression of large open spaces.

On a sizable hill is a sizable clock tower, with niches around the base (and maybe inside; it was locked).
I noticed that its clockface (not visible in my picture) wasn’t telling the right time, but as I visited the tower chimed the correct hour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a clock tower at a cemetery, but somehow it belongs. Reminds us of that thing, time, that we will all run out of someday.

St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church and Cemetery

Posted on March 15, 2021 by admin

Saturday was warm and pleasant, Sunday raw and unpleasant, and today — Ides of March Snow. If Rome had had a few inches that day, Caesar might have stayed home, since the rarity of snow would surely have been a warning not to do any official business. Oh, well.

Except for scattered dirty piles in parking lots, all of the massive February snows had melted by March 14. The March 15 snow will last a few days at most, due to a warming trend predicted for later in the week.

Illinois has a few hills, typically relics of ancient glacial movements. Built on top of one of them, in the village of Lemont, is St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church, which got its start in historic times — but still quite a while ago, in the 1830s.

On the slope of the hill is the church cemetery. One side of the hill — maybe better to call it a ridge — is quite steep, yet still sports stones.

The rest of the family had other things to do during the day on Saturday, which as mentioned turned out to be clear and warm, so I headed south for a look around the suburban stretch of Archer Avenue (Illinois 171) between Lemont and the village of Justice.

The urban section of Archer Avenue, “Archey Road,” was the haunt of Mr. Dooley once upon a time, but that’s a matter best left for others to describe (if you feel like paying for access).

In our time, suburban Archer Avenue is a thoroughfare featuring independent and chain restaurants, small office buildings, auto repair shops, liquor stores, churches, schools, municipal facilities, and vast cemeteries. The surrounding forest preserve lands are even larger, the further out you go.

St. James at Sag Bridge is near the junction of Archer Avenue and the north-south Illinois 83, which (to the north) is one of the main transit spines of DuPage County. St. James’ hill also rises near the triple waterways of the Des Plaines River, the manmade Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and an older manmade leftover of the 19th-century canal-building boom, the tiny-by-comparison Illinois & Michigan Canal.

To the south of the church and cemetery is yet another artificial waterway, the early 20th century Calumet Sag Channel, which gives the area its name, Sag Bridge, for a predecessor bridge of the one that now carries 171/83 across the channel. The Calumet Sag connects the Calumet River system with the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which it joins just to the west of the church. It’s a complicated bit of geography that I was only vaguely aware of before I decided to examine this part of Archer Avenue.

Sag? I wondered about that as well. The full name of the canal is the Calumet-Saganashkee Channel. I didn’t know that either, but learning it generated another question, as is often the case. Saganashkee?

Named after a local feature with a modified Indian name, it seems: Saganashkee Slough, which is a lake on forest preserve land in the area.

“A case in point is Saganashkee Slough,” the Chicago Tribune reported in 1994. “It was formerly a huge swamp that extended from west of 104th Avenue to the limits of Blue Island, and its original name, Ausaganashkee, is a Potawatomi Indian word that means ‘slush of the earth,’ wrote former Forest Preserve District general superintendent Cap Sauer in a historical account written in the late 1940s.

“During the construction of the I&M Canal in the 1830s, a feeder ditch was dug in the swamp that helped supply additional water to the canal. The slough was almost destroyed in the 1920s by blasting during the construction of the Cal-Sag Channel. Saganashkee was reconstructed by the forest preserve district, although in much smaller form, Berg said. At 325 acres, it is still, however, one of the largest bodies of water in the district.”

As for St. James, the church was founded to serve workers, mostly Irishmen, who were building the Illinois and Michigan Canal, with the current structure completed in the 1850s. A place to go Sunday morning after Saturday night revels, and sometimes donnybrooks, at least according to Irish stereotypes. I suspect the congregation is a good deal more diverse these days.

It’s a handsome limestone building, built from material from nearby Lemont-Sag quarries, which provided stone for Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago and the Chicago Water Tower besides. I understand the St. James interior is quite beautiful, but it was locked when I visited.

The Our Lady of the Forest grotto on the grounds was, of course, open for a look.

Compared with the church building, the grotto is new, built in 1998 for the for the 165th anniversary of the parish. See grottos when you can.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Cemeteries