Two Illinois Points of Interest

Posted on July 30, 2020 by admin

For years, I’ve seen the following two points of interest routinely included on road maps of Illinois. At least, on Rand McNally and Michelin: the Norwegian Settlers State Memorial and the Wild Bill Hickok State Memorial.

When it comes to points of interest on commonly available road maps, there must be just a touch of the arbitrary in their selection. Just a touch, because certainly mapmakers have their editorial standards. Still, I see those (typically) red dots and wonder not only what it is, but also why is that on the map and not something else?
Guess being a state memorial or monument helps land a place on maps. (That link is part of a larger list.)

One goal of our recent trip was to avoid large highways, which we mostly did until we headed for home, when we wanted a more speedy return. When heading out, we kept to smaller roads. One of these was Illinois 71, which passes through the unincorporated community of Norway.

Not far from Norway is the the Norwegian Settlers State Memorial. It’s an example of the plaques-on-rocks school of memorial design, along with a wooden structure, and U.S. and Norwegian flags.
“This Memorial commemorates the 1834 settlement at Norway, Illinois — the first permanent Norwegian settlement in the Midwest,” says the State Historic Preservation Office. “A departure point for many Norwegians who settled other parts of the Midwest, Norway became known as the ‘mother settlement.’ The monument, dedicated in 1934, honors the community and its founder, Cleng Peerson (1783-1865).”

Peerson got around. Though he led immigrants to the New World, he didn’t seem to be interested in settling for more than a few years at a time himself. According to Wiki, he even spent time in Bishop Hill among its Swedish settlers. I guess he had no hard feelings against those oppressors of the Norwegian people. He ended up in Texas in the mid-19th century, as a lot of people did.

Why three stones? One from 1934 memorializes the 100th anniversary of the settlement of Norway, Illinois. Another from 1975 memorializes the 150th anniversary of Norwegians first coming to America en masse. The King of Norway came for that occasion. And yet another (also 1975) notes that part of Illinois 71 is the Cleng Peerson Memorial Highway.

That’s not all. The wooden structure — which I assume is an homage to Norwegian design — has text front and back. Three separate plaques on the front, dated 1980, tell the “Norsk Story,” that is, Norwegians coming to America.

Two more plaques on back (from 1982, bicentennial of Peerson’s birth) offer more detail about the memorial, including lines about Lester Severskie (1918-82) who was “dedicated to the preservation of the Norwegian heritage of Norway, Ill.”, a list of the Norwegian heritage organizations in the U.S. as of 1982 (I had no idea there were so many), and a few lines to thank Olav V, members of the Norwegian government, and so on and so forth.

This has to be the wordiest memorial I’ve ever encountered. It’s the memorial equivalent of a logorrheic movie star upon winning an Oscar. I usually enjoy reading obscure plaques, but these tried my patience, especially in the high heat of July. (The rest of my family was sitting in air-conditioned comfort in the car.)

Even so, I’m glad I stopped. Especially because I noticed that behind the memorial is a small cemetery. The Cleng Peerson Memorial Cemetery, according to one source (who spells cemetery wrong), though I didn’t see any signs or plaques at all about it, just the headstones. According to another source, it’s the Nelson Cemetery.

Whatever the name, it must be an active local cemetery. At least one burial was fairly recent.
Peerson himself isn’t there. He’s buried near Clifton, Texas.

In a different context, you might call Peerson an empresario, along the lines of Stephen F. Austin in Texas, except that he was merely a leader of immigrants, not someone who was granted land by an existing government. Except that in the end, he was granted land by Texas, but for services rendered in populating the state with hardy Norwegians, not as an incentive to bring them.

Returning from the Illinois River Valley on Sunday, I made a point of stopping at the Wild Bill Hickok State Memorial in Troy Grove, Illinois. Wild Bill isn’t buried there either. He died in Deadwood, after all, and he rests there in Boot Hill.

Rather, the memorial marks the birthplace of James Butler Hickok, scout, spy, lawman, soldier, marksman, gambler, showman, folk hero, and dime novel and movie and TV character. It’s at the center of an open patch of land where the Hickok family home once stood, and includes one plaque and one bust.
The state of Illinois erected the plaque in 1929, and it wasn’t shy about lionizing Wild Bill. It needed a proofreader, too.
“He contributed largely in making the West a safe place for woman [sic] and children,” the plaque says in part. “His sterling courage was aways [sic] at the service of right and justice.”

The bust is more recent. I had to look it up, because I couldn’t find anything on site — not a word — to say who created it or when.
The state of Illinois says a “log-carved bust” of Hickok was added in 1999, but that’s no wooden bust. It took a little looking, but I found out that “in 2009, an attractive bronze bust of Hickok by artist William Piller was placed in the park. It replaced a carved wooden bust that had been in place 10 years but had severe weather damage,” according to the Danville, Illinois, Commercial-News.

Though it was a hot day, I wasn’t quite done with Troy Grove, pop. 230. A building near the memorial caught my eye. (The rest of my family was sitting in air-conditioned comfort in the car.)
Bank, eh? Well, not any more. Still, it’s a handsome little building. A detail toward the top further got my attention.

A logo marker apparently left by the Bankers Electrical Protection Co. of Minneapolis: a guard dog close to a money bag. The company seems to have specialized in bank vaults and other security features for banks of yore. You know, the sort of banks at risk from unauthorized withdrawals by the likes of the Cream Can Gang.

Besides a few images, I haven’t found out much else about BEPCo. (as it surely would be called now), mostly since I don’t feel like it. Enough to assume that it went out of business or was acquired by another security company long ago. Yet traces remain, in stone no less.

Prairie du Chien: Fort Crawford Military Cemetery, Trail of Presidents &c.

Posted on July 9, 2020 by admin

Not all road trips include visits to cemeteries or presidential sites, but I’m glad when they do. Our recent visit to the Driftless Area included both. On Saturday morning, I got up a little early to put gas in the car by myself. Yuriko knows what this means: I visit a local cemetery, too, if I can. She dozed on in the room while I drove a short distance to the Fort Crawford Military Cemetery, also known as the Fort Crawford Cemetery Soldiers’ Lot.

The entrance to the cemetery is a narrow patch of land in the residential section of mainland Prairie du Chien, with the burial ground at some distance behind an iron fence. Or maybe soldiers are buried in patch of ground, but I didn’t see any indication of it.

“Fort Crawford Cemetery is located on the former site of the Fort Crawford Military Reservation in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin,” says the National Cemetery Administration, which is part of the VA.

“There were two subsequent Fort Crawfords in Prairie du Chien during the 1800s. The original Fort Crawford, built in 1816, was situated adjacent to the Mississippi River. Repeated flooding led to its abandonment in 1826. Rebuilt on higher ground in 1830, the second incarnation of Fort Crawford operated until 1856.

“The first burials here were of the members of the 1st and 5th Infantry regiments stationed at the fort. The soldiers’ lot includes eight above-ground box-tombs that were likely erected by the regiments. The United States received the title for the lot in 1866. There are approximately 64 interments in the 0.59-acre soldiers’ lot…”

It’s sparsely populated.

With some of the inscriptions practically illegible.

Others were legible, but conveyed only anonymity. This looks like a latter-day stone, dedicated to an unknown. There were a sprinkling of these in the cemetery.

As I left, I spotted this near the entrance, attached to a boulder.

Just goes to show you how thorough the Daughters were. A memorial so obscure that no one has called for its removal? Not so.

On St. Feriole Island, I happened across a presidential site of sorts: Trail of Presidents. Trees in honor of presidents, arrayed in two rows to form a path, and originally planted in 2014.
I expected a tree planted for every U.S. president, which would have been the standard approach. But in fact the trees only honor presidents who visited Prairie du Chien either in or out of office, and includes two presidents of other entities besides the United States. I was surprised.

The full and semi-literate text of the sign at Trail of Presidents is here.

The honored U.S. presidents include: Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

For instance, President Fillmore has a white oak.
His plaque explains that he passed through Prairie du Chien when he was vice president in 1849. I haven’t ever seen anything about the travels of Vice President Fillmore — and out to the spanking-new state of Wisconsin that year would have been far afield — but I assume there’s some source for this buried in Fillmore’s papers, or maybe local news accounts.

The non-U.S. presidents? One was him again. He was stationed here, after all.

Also, curiously, Vicente Fox also has a tree, a red oak. “Vicente Fox attended Campion High School in Prairie du Chien in the 1960s,” the plaque says. “He then returned to Mexico.”

The last tree has been reserved for the next president to visit, so it isn’t too late for the most recent living officeholders.

One more Prairie du Chien sight I came across was overlooking the Mississippi, but not on St. Feriole Island. Rather, a statue of Marquette stands atop a tall column near the local chamber of commerce, and also not far from the bridge connecting Prairie du Chien with the town of Marquette, Iowa.

Rev. James Marquette, S.J.
Who discovered the
Mississippi River
at
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
June 17, 1673
This monument was erected
with
The solicited contributions
of generous citizens
by
The Business Men’s Association
Of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
A.D. 1910
Fred Herber & Son Architects

Unusual to see him called “James,” which doesn’t sound very French. We’ve seen him honored elsewhere around the Great Lakes; Pere Marquette got around, back when muscle power (yours or an animal’s) was the only way to do it.

Walnut Hill Cemetery, Baraboo

Posted on June 23, 2020 by admin

We finished our hiking at Devil’s Lake SP at about 3 in the afternoon and headed into Baraboo for something to eat. Not so long ago, that would have meant parking ourselves at a restaurant for a meal. Though there are no restrictions on indoor dining in Wisconsin now — the whole kit and kaboodle was thrown out — we thought better of it, and ordered takeout.

That left us about 20 minutes to wait for the food. Rather than wait in the car in the restaurant parking lot, I consulted Google maps and found a nearby place to go: the 52-acre Walnut Hill Cemetery, which has about 11,500 permanent residents. Baraboo, the Census Bureau tells me, has a shade over 12,100 living residents.

It’s a pleasant cemetery.

I hadn’t come to see any specific grave, but I had to investigate one of the few mausoleums I saw, there on a small rise.

It turned out to be the resting place of Al. Ringling (1852-1916), the eldest of the circus family, and his wife Lou. Makes sense. Baraboo was a circus town, after all.

Later I read that some of the other circus brothers are buried at Walnut Hill as well, but I didn’t spot them. I did see another intriguing stone.

JOHN DUCKENS
Born a slave in Kentucky
Died in Baraboo, Wi 1894
Aged 75 years

A new-looking stone at that. It’s a replacement for a weather-worn original, put there only in 2011 by the Sauk County Historical Society, which published a sketch of his life — probably all that’s possible — as a Sauk County Notable.

Dundee Township East Cemetery

Posted on June 15, 2020 by admin

At the intersection of Dundee Ave. and Higgins Road (Illinois 25 and 72) is the 48-acre Dundee Township East Cemetery, owned by the township of that name, but also entirely within the village of West Dundee in Kane County. There’s no fencing or anything else to separate it from those fairly busy roads.

We — that is, Ann and I — visited briefly on Saturday when we were out that way, which is northwest from where we live.

The cemetery dates from the 1890s, no doubt long before those adjacent roads were paved, though it’s possible that part of the future Illinois 72 had planks, since I understand much of its route follows the old Galena-Chicago Stagecoach Trail. These enthusiasts drove the trail’s modern-equivalent roads on a motorcycle. Not for me, but I’d consider using a car.

It’s a pleasant cemetery in the summer.

In an older section, there were a fair number of German names, and some German-language script on the stones. Here’s a fine German name: Schneidewendt, whose stone memorializes burials in the early 20th century.

Not many mausoleums that I noticed, but there were a few. I expect a lot of the population in Dundee Township a century and some years ago were prosperous farmers, but not that prosperous.
Whoever The Family of Theodore Kunke were — that’s the text over the door — they had the scratch for a simple edifice.

All Saints Catholic Cemetery & Mausoleum

Posted on March 18, 2020 by admin

Recently I was in suburban Des Plaines in the mid-afternoon on a sunny day, not too cold. I expect such forays, even a few suburbs over, will become much less frequent in the weeks ahead. They already have.

While there, I took the opportunity to visit All Saints Catholic Cemetery & Mausoleum for a few minutes. Such a visit counts, I think, as social distancing. Few other (living) people were there, all of them way off in the distance. I don’t think I came within 200 feet of another living soul.

All Saints is enormous, with two sections straddling N. River Road (US 45), and is just west of the Des Plaines River. It’s also across the road, Central Road, from the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which I visited back in 2011.The eastern lobe is the oldest section, opening in 1923. It’s dense with upright stones.

Some larger monuments.

And a handful of private mausoleums.
Curious, I looked up Sherman J. Sexton (1892-1956). In the 19th century, his father founded John Sexton & Co. (Sexton Quality Foods), which evolved into a major Chicago-based national wholesale grocery. Sherman Sexton ran it for much of the 20th century. After much M&A, a corporate descendant is still in the wholesale food business.

Find-A-Grave lists a number of notables buried at All Saints: pro sports players, Congressmen, others. The only one I knew was sportscaster Harry Carey, though I’ve also heard of the band Nine Inch Nails. James Woolley, the group’s keyboardist for a time, reposes at the cemetery. I didn’t come looking for notable graves anyway.

The western section is much larger and includes upright stones, memorials flush with the ground, and a lot of land for expansion.

Along with statues of Jesus and saints and other figures.

The archdiocese must have seen which way the demographic wind was blowing in the 1950s, namely to the suburbs, and so acquired a lot more land for the cemetery while the getting was good. The western section opened in 1954.

The ’70s-vintage community mausoleum, like the cemetery itself, is large. I don’t know that I’ve seen a larger one. It includes a number of wings and looks something like a NASA office building.
I didn’t go inside, but I did take a look at the statues lined up outside. Place of prominence is for Jesus. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s Him.
Six Apostles line up on either side of Jesus.Not long before I left, I drove to one of the edges of the western section, past graves that were clearly for children. Three people were standing there. I drove on and parked at some distance from them, to take a look at St. Benedict, pictured above.

When returning to my car, I looked back in their direction.
They had released balloons into the sky.

California Leftovers

Posted on March 12, 2020 by admin

I drove by Randy’s Donuts near LAX, but didn’t stop to buy any. The first place I did go in Los Angeles, practically right off the plane on February 21, was Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles on W. Manchester Blvd. Mm, good. Almost as good as Maxine’s in Indianapolis, which is high praise.

After I ate chicken and waffles there — a late lunch — I determined that I didn’t have time to go all the way to Venice and stroll around the canals before I had to be back in Ladera Heights to check into my short-term residence. So Venice, California, remains an unfulfilled ambition. Like Venice, Italy.

Instead I drove over to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery, which is on the edge of Culver City. It has everything it needs to be an aesthetic cemetery — land contour, trees and other greenery — except upright stones or much funerary art.

Still, I found Jimmy Durante. That’s something. Inka Dinka Doo.

I had lunch my first full day in Los Angeles at Grand Central Market downtown. Once a market, now it’s mostly a food hall. A popular place. The likes of which will be largely empty for a while now? This pic is status quo ante.

A large selection of eats. With some good neon.Overpriced, though. While I was eating, rain started to fall outside. Heavy for about half an hour. That was the only rain during my visit.

Saw all too many of these on the sidewalks of LA.
I even saw a man kick one hard in disgust.

I was within sight of the Santa Monica Pier when in Santa Monica, but I didn’t have the energy to actually visit the pier. Didn’t want to put up with the crowds, either.
I did see this.
That would be the opposite of the sign in downtown Chicago.

The East Garden at the Getty Villa includes this fountain.
“The enchanting central wall fountain represents a replica of a mosaic and shell fountain from the House of the Large Fountain in Pompeii,” Alice’s Garden Travel Buzz says. I’ll take Alice’s word for it.

On my return from Texas on March 1, I had a fine view of Chicago as we flew in. First to the south of O’Hare, which was visible as a whole, then across the city and over downtown — I didn’t know that was allowed — and out over Lake Michigan, where we turned. The flight back to O’Hare crossed over the North Side of Chicago, so I got a sky-high view of Wrigley Field, and then lower and lower over the suburbs near O’Hare. I recognized some of the larger roads. Some intersections. A building or two. Wait, what’s that pyramid-shaped building?

The guy next to me on my flight home from Texas rubbed his hands with sanitizer three or four times over two hours. After touching the seatback tray table, I think. If one impact of the novel coronavirus is to encourage people to wash (or clean) their hands more, that’s a good thing.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Posted on March 8, 2020 by admin

With a name like Hollywood Forever Cemetery, I suspected — in spite of what I’d read — that the place had gotten the Hollywood treatment instead of a proper renovation. That is, superficial and unsatisfying.

Fortunately, I was wrong. Just off a dowdy selection of Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood Forever is a resplendent cemetery, on par with any of the lush rural-cemetery-movement grounds I’ve seen in other parts of the country.

With examples of funerary art.
A number of private mausoleums.
Including one picturesquely set on a small island, the tomb of William A. Clark Jr. (1877-1934), son of copper baron Sen. William A. Clark Sr.

Plenty of trees.
If you find just the right spot, you can see the Hollywood sign off in the distance.
There are a few unexpected features, such as a section devoted to Southeast Asian memorials.
I’ve also read that in our time, Russian immigrants are fond of the cemetery. There’s plenty of visible evidence of that.

Along with a sprinkling of earlier Russian émigrés.
Hollywood Forever also sports a number of unconventional memorials. Something you might expect in California, except that I’ve seen them elsewhere.
Or maybe not unconventional, but just a little unusual.

Plenty of regular folks, too. Most of the permanent population would be, I believe. John Taylor was laid to rest just as the movie business started getting off the ground in Hollywood.

The cemetery dates back to 1899 and has had three names: Hollywood Cemetery, Hollywood Memorial Park, and since 1998, Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Its history is as strange as Hollywood itself.

A long-time owner in the 20th century essentially used the place as a piggy bank, and let it go to pot by the 1990s. The current owner invested millions in the property’s renovation — or oversaw the investment, and I’ll say it again, did a splendid job — with the funds at least partly generated by a pre-need funeral company Ponzi scheme his father and brother went to prison for, though the owner himself wasn’t charged. Sounds like a subplot in the entertaining and California-esque Six Feet Under, except the con was perpetrated in Missouri.

The whole story is more than I care to unpack, but for further reading there’s “The Strange History of Hollywood Forever Cemetery,” an article about the Ponzi scheme, and this entertaining article in LA Weekly.

Not only has the current owner made the cemetery look good, he’s raised public awareness of it through various events, such as outdoor movie screenings and other events not usually associated with graveyards. Also — and perhaps most astute of all, from a business perspective — he seems to have opened up space to be interred, especially in mausoleums near famous people (example to follow).

That brings me to the fact that I’ve buried the lead (har, har). All the features I’ve mentioned above are nice, but not really why I spent a couple of hours at Hollywood Forever on a pleasantly warm Sunday morning.

I’d come to find the graves of movie stars. Normally, celebrity earns a shrug from me. But I was in Hollywood. Movie stars are part of its sense of place. It’s a movie industry town, after all. Besides, a highly detailed map of the cemetery is available at the front office for a reasonable $5, and it guides you to the graves of about 200 notables.

“We sell more of these maps than we do flowers,” the lady behind the counter told me.

So I was on a treasure hunt to find some stars that I’d heard of, especially from the Hollywood of before I was born, more or less. It was fun.

Grand names are part of the deal at Hollywood Forever. Parts of the cemetery include the Garden of Eternal Love, Chandler Gardens, Garden of Memory, and a Jewish section featuring the Plains of Abraham, Garden of Jerusalem and Garden of Moses. This is the the entrance is the Abbey of Psalms Mausoleum.
I entered in search of the Crying Indian, Iron Eyes Cody. I found him in a modest niche. His wife, who died about 20 years before he did, rests there as well. She’s called “Mrs. Iron Eyes Cody” on the plaque; you have to look her up to learn she had a name besides her Italian-American husband’s made-up Native American name. She was Bertha Parker Pallan and, unlike him, was actually an Indian.

Iron Eyes is small potatoes compared to the real star of the Abbey of Psalms: Judy Garland. She has her own chapel-like room, re-interred there only in 2017. That must have been quite a coup for Hollywood Forever.

Want to have your ashes near Judy? It can be arranged. A lot of new-looking, glass-door niches are in the chapel walls, most still empty, though I did note that John Cassese, the “Dance Doctor,” recently occupied an eye-level niche across from Judy. His niche includes an urn, but also a bobblehead-like figure of him, a printed obituary, an award he won in 2013, a small disco ball, some seashells and other objects.

From there I headed to the open air, looking for Mel Blanc.
I left a penny. Here was a man who had entertained me and millions of others.

Most of the graves I wanted to see were in the Garden of Legends, an open area, and the Cathedral Mausoleum, so I soon headed that way. Douglas Fairbanks and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. have their own lawn and reflecting pool, with a major memorial next to the Cathedral Mausoleum.

The cemetery shop only had a few postcards for sale, but they included ones featuring Douglas Fairbanks, probably dressed for The Black Pirate and looking very much like the actor who invented swash and buckle. I sent one of them to a friend of mine and wrote, “You or I might be cool, but we’ll never be Douglas Fairbanks cool.”

Heading into the Garden of Legends, I soon happened across Johnny Ramone. I didn’t even know he was dead.
Nearby is a cenotaph for Hattie McDaniel, who was denied burial here in 1952 because of segregation. Her memorial was erected in 1999.

Next I spent a while looking for Fay Wray, and found her, and then Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The composer is buried under a tree.
I sent the picture to my old friend Kevin, a movie music enthusiast. But for Kevin I might not know about Korngold, or have ever listened to such treasures as the music from The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Sea Hawk.

Rounding the pond that forms the centerpiece of Garden of Legends, I came across Cecil B. DeMille.
One I hadn’t been looking for: Virginia Rappe.
I puzzled for a moment. Who was that? Then I remembered.

Tyrone Power is hard to miss.
Next to him is Marion Davies’ mausoleum, which you might miss if you don’t know that her actual name was Douras, which is above the entrance. She paid for the building herself, I’ve read.
At the Cathedral Mausoleum, an even larger complex than the Abbey of Psalms Mausoleum, I found Peter Lorre in a niche. I was looking for him. I also found Mickey Rooney. I wasn’t looking for him, but he does illustrate that stars are once again considering the cemetery, now that the period of neglect is over.

Rooney’s inscription says: “One of the greatest entertainers the world has ever known. Hollywood will always be his home.”

Well, de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, Mickey, though I want to mock that inscription. Then I began noticing some other recent arrivals from the movie business, most of whom I’d never heard of. Some of the memorials were like ads in Variety, touting their careers.

Last stop: Valentino. I couldn’t very well miss him.
I’d read that lipstick is often there, and so it was. He’s got amazing staying power for a silent film star.

Curious, I took note of the grave next to Valentino: June Mathis Balboni (d. 1927). Just an accident that this person is next to the Great Lover?

No. She knew him. In fact, she discovered Valentino and wrote some of his movies, most notably The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Remarkable the tales that cemeteries tell.

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels &c

Posted on March 4, 2020 by admin

Another place that still under construction the last time I visited Los Angeles, in 2001: the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake so badly damaged the previous seat, the 1870s Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, that the archdiocese wanted to tear it down and build another cathedral on the site. Preservationists, led by the Los Angeles Conservancy, fought against that, and so eventually a deal was struck allowing the city to take possession of the former cathedral, and the archdiocese to build a new building on downtown land given to it by the city.

These days the former cathedral is an event center — which I didn’t see — and the new cathedral, completed in 2002, looks like this.Not everyone loves the design by Rafael Moneo, which I’ve seen called deconstructivist or postmodern, but which looks pretty brutal to me. I wasn’t all that fond of it myself, though it is interesting.

Does it say sacred space to me? Not particularly. You could argue that most of us have been conditioned by traditional forms to feel that way. Or you could argue that of course sacred space should be beautiful, not brutal. Take your pick. My goal when I’m somewhere is to see what’s there.

Besides, the interior is less brutal somehow.
The light fixtures and the natural light help soften the space, I think. Also note that people use the space. While I lurked around the back of the cathedral, a couple named George and Florence were getting married up front. People probably get married there every Saturday except during lent.

At the back is the Ezcaray Reredos, an intricate work of carved black walnut.
It dates from 17th-century Spain. More information about how it came to be in modern California is here, though I will say it left Spain during an impoverished period in the 20th century. The sign in front of the reredos is incorrect, however, when it says that the chapel attached to Saint Philip Neri at Ezcaray, original home of the work, “was dismantled in 1925 after being damaged in the Spanish Civil War…”

On the cathedral’s lower level is a mausoleum.
Most of the spaces are yet to be occupied. I later read that Gregory Peck is interred there, but I didn’t see him. I did spot California Chief Justice Malcom Millar Lucas (d. 2016), who had the distinction earlier in his judicial career of presiding over the trial of Charles Manson.

The relics of Saint Vibiana are in the mausoleum as well. She was a 3rd-century martyr.
Atlas Obscura: “Her time in the public eye began in 1853 when her tomb was excavated from the catacombs of San Sisto in Rome. Unlike many of the so-called ‘catacomb saints’ who didn’t even have names, the inscription on Vibiana’s tomb gave her name, the day of her death (August 31), the symbolic laurel wreath of martyrdom, and indicated she was ‘innocent and pure.’

“The following year Bl. Pope Pius IX gave her relics — blood, tomb inscription, and body — to Thaddeus Amat, the newly appointed Bishop of Monterrey, California….”

After a time in Santa Barbara, and then many years at the former cathedral in Los Angeles, Vibiana eventually came to where she is now. Interesting that a saint migrated to California like everyone else.

The cathedral isn’t the only church I managed to visit in Los Angeles. Not far away is Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church, an historic parish church.
I rested a while inside. The name really should be rendered as La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, since all of its masses are in Spanish. The historic marker outside, in English and Spanish, says (in English) that the church “was dedicated on December 8, 1822 during California’s Mexican era. Originally known as La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles, the church was the only Catholic church for the pueblo. Today it primarily serves the Hispanic population of Los Angeles.”

On Sunday morning, as I headed through Koreatown, I spotted St. James’ Episcopal Church, or St. James’ in-the-City, on Wilshire Blvd.
I attended part of the service that was going on at the time. The church dates from the 1920s, done in a more traditional Gothic Revival by a San Francisco architect, Benjamin McDougall. Most notable about the design: a lot of fine stained glass.

Immanuel Presbyterian Church isn’t far away on Wilshire Blvd.
Unlike St. James’, it wasn’t open when I came by. Still, I got a good look from the across the street.

Springtown Cemetery

Posted on January 14, 2020 by admin

Near the entrance to Marengo Cave in Marengo, Indiana, is a patch of land called Springtown Cemetery. Some of the cave runs further underneath, I think.

A sign outside the cemetery fence says: This cemetery, one of the first in this area, dates back to the early 1800s, when Marengo was known as Springtown. Oris Hiestand, one of the discoverers of Marengo Cave, is buried here. The land for the cemetery was given to the town by Mr. Samuel M. Stewart, the first owner of Marengo Cave.

The rain had just slacked off when I took a look around. It isn’t overcrowded with stones.
The stones might or might not represent everyone who’s buried there. Someone may know for sure. Or not.

A few unexpected touches of green in late December.
Mossy, wet stones honoring obscure people in an obscure corner of the world.If that’s not a momento mori, I don’t know what is.

Hollywood Cemetery

Posted on October 30, 2019 by admin

It sounds like a place where movie stars repose, but Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond had that name long before the film industry acquired its metonym. The graveyard in California is the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, named such only in 1998 in a clear exercise in marketing. Founded in 1849, Virginia’s Hollywood is a first-rate example of the rural cemetery movement of the 19th century, and as beautiful a graveyard as you’ll find anywhere.

The cemetery stands on hills overlooking the James River, covering 130 acres not far west of downtown and counting more than 64,000 permanent residents. It has everything an aesthetic cemetery should have: landscape contour, trees and bushes, funerary art and a wide variety of stones, and notable burials.

I went on the warm and clear morning of October 15 not long after Hollywood opened. Getting there wasn’t too hard. It’s enough of an attraction that signs point the way.

But I suppose not that many people come on Tuesday mornings. A handful of joggers and dog walkers and groundsmen were the only other living people there.

Some mausoleums, but maybe not as many as in cemeteries in historically more prosperous parts of the country.

Hollywood offers some nice views of the James. I’d heard that the river was low because the region’s been dry lately.
As you’d expect, one section has an enormous Confederate burial ground.
Made distinctive by a monumental pyramid, dedicated in 1869.
“This famed 90-foot pyramid stands as a monument to the 18,000 Confederate soldiers buried in Hollywood Cemetery,” the cemetery web site says. “Made entirely from large blocks of James River granite, the pyramid was created through the efforts of the women of the Hollywood Memorial Association who tended the graves of the Confederate dead after the Civil War. They worked together to raise over $18,000 and commissioned the help of engineer Charles Henry Dimmock to design the pyramid.”

By chance, I happened across J.E.B. Stuart’s grave. Plenty of other Confederate generals lie in Hollywood as well.

But I wanted to find the cemetery’s presidential graves, which I did. Jefferson Davis was hard to miss, located toward the western edge of Hollywood among other members of his family. He and his wife Varina are in front of the bronze.
I believe that’s the third flag of the Confederacy, limp on the flagpole. The draped figure on the left marks the graves of Joel and Margaret Hayes; she was one of the Davis daughters. Off further to the left, though not in the picture, is the grave of Fitzhugh Lee.

The angel marks the grave of Varina Anne Davis (1864-1898), youngest daughter of the Davises.
On one of the cemetery’s prominent ridges is Presidents Circle, location of the two U.S. presidents.
One is James Monroe.
He died in 1831, before the cemetery opened, but was re-interred here in 1858 from New York City, during the centennial year of his birth. Apparently the reinterment was quite a big deal, involving speeches, banquets, civilian and military escorts, and a fair amount of cooperation between the states of Virginia and New York, as detailed in this article in the Richmond-Times Dispatch.

The article also notes a toast delivered by a Richmonder at the Virginia banquet: “New York and Virginia; united in glory, united in interest… nothing but fanaticism can separate them.”

Oh, well. Architect Albert Lybrock designed Monroe’s Gothic Revival cast-iron monument. Seems like he’s best known for that very work.

Not far away is John Tyler’s tall marker, mostly in shadow when I saw it.
He happened to be in Richmond when he died in early 1862, before he could take his seat in the CSA House of Representatives. He had been in the Provisional Congress, however.
His second wife, Julia, is with him, and a few of his large brood are nearby. Hollywood Cemetery says: “Tyler requested arrangements for a simple burial, but Confederate President Jefferson Davis hosted a grand event, complete with a Confederate flag draped over the coffin.”

The bust wasn’t added until 1915. Guess bronze was in short supply in secessionist Virginia, and funds in short supply after the war. The work is by Raymond Averill Porter, better known for a Henry Cabot Lodge statue in Boston.

Counting the two latest ones, that makes 17 U.S. presidential grave sites I’ve visited: Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, Tyler, Polk, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Grant, Hayes, B. Harrison, Taft, Hoover, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon and Ford.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Cemeteries