Whatever happened to respect for the dead?
On a regular basis, newspapers run stories of nighttime cemetery scenes in which grave markers are destroyed or stolen. Decades-old memorial stones are toppled, and concrete vaults are pried open. Fragile markers of lives long gone are turned into rubble in the blink of a bleary eye.
Granted, this is not a new trend. Youngsters for generations have found darkened graveyards too tempting in their search for the perfect spot to enact destruction.
But the problem seems to be escalating.
Last week (Jan. 13) in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, the city's oldest graveyard was attacked. More than 20 mangled gravestones were discovered by police who claimed to be baffled at such destruction. And another incident occurred this past Halloween in Caseyville, Illinois, where a vandal violated 5 graves at a 155-year-old cemetery, destroying stones, tearing out planted flowers and leaving behind evidence of what police officials are calling a satanic ceremony.
But malicious activity like this is not just a local problem. In Franklin Co., Illinois, a group of teens struck at a 200-year-old cemetery last February, damaging nearly 50 headstones, one-third of the markers in the Mitchell Cemetery. In March, three girls, two age 9 and one age 12, knocked over 40 stones in Nebraska’s oldest cemetery, causing damage that will cost $30,000 to repair. And in June, two 11-year-olds in Massachusetts admitted to toppling 24 headstones, some more than a century-and-a-half old.
A month later, 38 markers designating Jewish graves in a Denver cemetery were damaged by unknown vandals. And in Washington state in September, the gravestones of 250-plus pioneer men and women were desecrated by a pair of teens at a cemetery that was the scene of similar damage in January.
And on Halloween 2004, a 150-year-old Chicago cemetery was the scene of the crime when teens caused more than $5,000 in damage to obelisks and stones there.
But it isn’t only teens and preteens doing the damage. In September, a 36-year-old Pennsylvania woman and her 5-year-old daughter were caught with a collection of vases, statuary and other items they stole from area cemeteries over a period of several months. The woman also confessed to vandalizing many graves during the thefts. Authorities estimate that repairs could top $10,000.
All of this detestable damage took place in the past a year all over the country.
Back about 150 years ago, a different mindset prevailed. What’s known as “the rural cemetery movement” was responsible for the development of artfully designed cemeteries such as Pere Lachaise(cq) Cemetery in Paris and Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston. Bellefontaine Cemetery on West Florissant Ave. in St. Louis is such a burial ground, one of 32 national garden, or rural, cemeteries. In Great Britain and the U.S., these sites were more than just a place to visit on key holidays. Decorated with ornamental benches and meditative sculptures, they were frequented by families for picnics and times of peaceful enjoyment and were a reflection of a respect for the dead that is often missing these days.
Today, the cleanup of neglected cemeteries earns newspaper headlines. The renovation of the 200-year-old Vaughn Cemetery in Wood River, Illinois, for example, was completed in September. The historic cemetery includes 7 graves of those killed during what is known as the Wood River Massacre and had often been the site of tombstone terrorism.
Of course, there are other exceptions to the trend of graveyard disrespect. For example, a group of volunteer actors in Alton has been galvanizing local interest in cemetery etiquette for 4 years by staging live mini-dramas in the City Cemetery, constructing verbal epitaphs of the dead locals who are buried there. Last year’s (2005) Vintage Voices program drew hundreds of paying visitors over 4 weekends in September and October.
If bringing the dead back to life is one way of rebuilding respect for our loved ones’ final resting place, let’s just hope that more communities will find equally constructive solutions to a problem that just won’t die.
Monday, January 16, 2006
A Personal Hero
My friend, Cynthia, is a good woman who has never taken life’s gifts for granted.
A solid business investment 11 years ago in Georgia left her with enough free time to invest in handling her own home improvements. She has torn out carpeting, installed tile flooring, replumbed her bathroom (and mine), rewired parts of my house and painted every surface in all of her homes (and in some of mine).
She’s a can-do lady.
But on Aug. 30, 2005, one day after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, Cynthia’s priorities changed. Cynthia, 52, had often worked as a volunteer, spending time at an Atlanta children’s hospital with youngsters dying from cystic fibrosis and using her career as a makeup artist to teach people with disfiguring diseases how to apply corrective makeup.
So Cynthia called the Red Cross center in Louisville, where she now lives, and asked to be sent somewhere in the hurricane-stricken South, anywhere where she knew she could help.
But the Red Cross staffers, overwhelmed with the task at hand, said they’d have to get back to her. As she awaited deployment, Cynthia fielded phone calls at the Red Cross call center on E. Chestnut Street, helping frantic family members locate loved ones via a computer database. She usually worked the overnight shift.
The stories she heard were heartbreaking.
“One woman was getting released from a (Gulf Port area) hospital the next morning. She had lost her home,” Cynthia recently recalled. “She was looking for a place to stay. She had nothing, and she didn’t want to be on the street. All I could do was give her the phone number for the local Red Cross chapter. They could guide her to a shelter.”
Another call came from a woman from outside the hurricane area who was trying to help an ill family member, a survivor of the storm. Her relative had numerous health problems, and she was out of insulin and other medications. She had no water, no electricity and no way of getting out. Both women were panicked.
“This woman’s body was shutting down,” Cynthia explained. “I notified the Coast Guard to come in and do a rescue. It was such a desperate situation.”
After a few days of gut-wrenching phone work, Cynthia had to do more. “I knew I had to be there, even for just a day or two. I had to do something more to help somebody, ” she later told me.
She asked Red Cross officials again to send her south. Same reply, same overworked staff. Finally, Cynthia decided to go on her own. She chose Biloxi.
She then sent an e-mail to a handful of her closest friends, asking them to sponsor her trip so that she wouldn’t be a burden on an already overburdened disaster relief system. In the e-mail, she promised them, “The monies I receive will be used for my bare necessities only. Any monies I have left over will be put into the hands of the victims. I will not give it to the agencies, but to the people I meet while working in Biloxi.” The response was immediate. Friends’ donations totaled more than $1,500.
On Friday, Sept. 30, she packed her old Volvo with water, food, cleaning supplies, tools and camping gear and pointed her wheels toward Mississippi. She knew someone who knew someone there who had agreed to put her up ... maybe.
Her arrival, unannounced, at the Biloxi Red Cross headquarters, located in a Navy Seabee’s base, shocked local officials who told Cynthia that she was the first person from out of state to simply follow her heart and head to where she was needed.
During the day, she helped orient newly arriving volunteers. At night, she toiled side by side with those workers, assisting them with the tough task of making the lives of the evacuees livable. Once again, she was hearing stories that tore at her heart. But this time, she was seeing firsthand what total, life-changing devastation had been wrought by Katrina.
After six days, Cynthia had to leave Biloxi. But before she left, she gave away all of her donors’ money, and she took pictures. Lots of pictures of what she had been living with for the last 144 life-altering hours.
What can’t be photographed or even described sufficiently, she said, was the smell. The awful stench. “Every time you go outside or open the car window, you smell it. It reeks. It’s everywhere, inescapable,” she said.
Inescapable, like the memories of the families and volunteers with whom she toiled, unavoidable and tragic reminders of the months and years it will take to recover and rebuild and heal from the nation’s largest natural disaster.
But Cynthia’s role isn’t over. This tireless Southern woman will be going back.
“After what I’ve seen, I’ve made a decision,” said Cynthia from her cell phone as she drove out of Biloxi on Oct. 6. “I’m going to be doing a lot more disaster work. A lot more.”
You go, girl.
A solid business investment 11 years ago in Georgia left her with enough free time to invest in handling her own home improvements. She has torn out carpeting, installed tile flooring, replumbed her bathroom (and mine), rewired parts of my house and painted every surface in all of her homes (and in some of mine).
She’s a can-do lady.
But on Aug. 30, 2005, one day after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, Cynthia’s priorities changed. Cynthia, 52, had often worked as a volunteer, spending time at an Atlanta children’s hospital with youngsters dying from cystic fibrosis and using her career as a makeup artist to teach people with disfiguring diseases how to apply corrective makeup.
So Cynthia called the Red Cross center in Louisville, where she now lives, and asked to be sent somewhere in the hurricane-stricken South, anywhere where she knew she could help.
But the Red Cross staffers, overwhelmed with the task at hand, said they’d have to get back to her. As she awaited deployment, Cynthia fielded phone calls at the Red Cross call center on E. Chestnut Street, helping frantic family members locate loved ones via a computer database. She usually worked the overnight shift.
The stories she heard were heartbreaking.
“One woman was getting released from a (Gulf Port area) hospital the next morning. She had lost her home,” Cynthia recently recalled. “She was looking for a place to stay. She had nothing, and she didn’t want to be on the street. All I could do was give her the phone number for the local Red Cross chapter. They could guide her to a shelter.”
Another call came from a woman from outside the hurricane area who was trying to help an ill family member, a survivor of the storm. Her relative had numerous health problems, and she was out of insulin and other medications. She had no water, no electricity and no way of getting out. Both women were panicked.
“This woman’s body was shutting down,” Cynthia explained. “I notified the Coast Guard to come in and do a rescue. It was such a desperate situation.”
After a few days of gut-wrenching phone work, Cynthia had to do more. “I knew I had to be there, even for just a day or two. I had to do something more to help somebody, ” she later told me.
She asked Red Cross officials again to send her south. Same reply, same overworked staff. Finally, Cynthia decided to go on her own. She chose Biloxi.
She then sent an e-mail to a handful of her closest friends, asking them to sponsor her trip so that she wouldn’t be a burden on an already overburdened disaster relief system. In the e-mail, she promised them, “The monies I receive will be used for my bare necessities only. Any monies I have left over will be put into the hands of the victims. I will not give it to the agencies, but to the people I meet while working in Biloxi.” The response was immediate. Friends’ donations totaled more than $1,500.
On Friday, Sept. 30, she packed her old Volvo with water, food, cleaning supplies, tools and camping gear and pointed her wheels toward Mississippi. She knew someone who knew someone there who had agreed to put her up ... maybe.
Her arrival, unannounced, at the Biloxi Red Cross headquarters, located in a Navy Seabee’s base, shocked local officials who told Cynthia that she was the first person from out of state to simply follow her heart and head to where she was needed.
During the day, she helped orient newly arriving volunteers. At night, she toiled side by side with those workers, assisting them with the tough task of making the lives of the evacuees livable. Once again, she was hearing stories that tore at her heart. But this time, she was seeing firsthand what total, life-changing devastation had been wrought by Katrina.
After six days, Cynthia had to leave Biloxi. But before she left, she gave away all of her donors’ money, and she took pictures. Lots of pictures of what she had been living with for the last 144 life-altering hours.
What can’t be photographed or even described sufficiently, she said, was the smell. The awful stench. “Every time you go outside or open the car window, you smell it. It reeks. It’s everywhere, inescapable,” she said.
Inescapable, like the memories of the families and volunteers with whom she toiled, unavoidable and tragic reminders of the months and years it will take to recover and rebuild and heal from the nation’s largest natural disaster.
But Cynthia’s role isn’t over. This tireless Southern woman will be going back.
“After what I’ve seen, I’ve made a decision,” said Cynthia from her cell phone as she drove out of Biloxi on Oct. 6. “I’m going to be doing a lot more disaster work. A lot more.”
You go, girl.
Why this title?
For years, I had a tiny piece of newspaper taped to my fridge that read, "You have broken the Fifth Rule. You have taken yourself too seriously. What are the other rules? There are no other rules." The name attached to the quote was Pierre du Pont. At the time, I had no idea who the man was but loved the idea of one critical, self-regulating mantra -- that I should not take myself too seriously ... or not take anything too seriously, for that matter.
Pierre du Pont had a big corporation to run, but not I. As a writer and a teacher of writing, I tend to take everything too seriously. The construction of this blog, I'm hoping, will be a way for me to funnel some of that useless energy into a positive creation.
I'm just beginning. I don't know where this is going or what real purpose it will serve for me to have a blog. I'm just worried that I'll take it too seriously and really screw it up.
Sue
Pierre du Pont had a big corporation to run, but not I. As a writer and a teacher of writing, I tend to take everything too seriously. The construction of this blog, I'm hoping, will be a way for me to funnel some of that useless energy into a positive creation.
I'm just beginning. I don't know where this is going or what real purpose it will serve for me to have a blog. I'm just worried that I'll take it too seriously and really screw it up.
Sue
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