Hollywood Cemetery: Children

The image above is a stained glass window inside one of the vaults. One of the saddest things that you are reminded of when visiting Hollywood Cemetery is the high rate of infant mortality in Richmond during the 1800s continuing until the mid 1900s. Of course there were terrible epidemics like typhoid fever, scarlet fever and influenza. There are plots containing sometimes whole families that were overcome with one of these illnesses. Sadly too, there were cases of infantacide, though many went undetected. The most famous child's grave in Hollywood Cemetery belongs to Florence Rees. Little Florence's cradle grave is guarded by a large cast-iron Newfoundland dog.



The dog decorated a Richmond storefront and was one of Florence's favorite. She would talk to it and pet it when she visited the store. Florence died of scarlet fever and the store owner had the dog placed in the cemetery to watch over her. Placing the dog in the cemetery prevented it from being melted down for munitions like so much of the other available metal.





On my last visit to the cemtery, I was struck by one family's attempt to continue the family name. Here I found two infants buried side by side, each having been named after their father, Evan Robert.



Children's areas in the family plots, especially where infants a buried are often adorned with symbols of innocence such as cheribs, doves, and lambs.




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Elizabeth B. and Frances J. Ratcliffe. Elizabeth was four and Frances was not quite one.



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Edwin Warrock Goode, six months old.



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Robert (stone not very legible)



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Eddie Wray
Eddie was ten when he died. His father was one of the stone artisans that created many of the wonderful monuments in the cemetery. In 1899, Mr. Wray had created a broken column of Italian marble for Jefferson Davis, Junior. When Eddie died, his father created a broken tree trunk. While a tree symbolizes life and immortality, a broken tree trunk, like broken columns, symbolizes mortality, a life cut short. Mr. Wray placed on Eddie's tree trunk his bookbag and his hat.



Eddie's tree was so touching that it was copied a few years later when young Herbert Quarles died.

Hollywood Cemetery: Women and Angels

The next few posts will be scenes from Hollywood Cemetery As I mentioned before, we have decided to undertake (oh my, such a bad pun) a project. To be exact we are working on a book project about Hollywood with our friend Ashley. Ashley is a very talented handbound bookmaker. I hope she doesn't mind that I am sharing this announcement. I can't contain my excitement about getting to work with her. We decided to make a limited edition book. Unlike the other books about the cemetery, we will not be focusing so much on the history or the notable people that are interred in this historical landmark. Instead, we are concentrating on the art and symbology of the memorials placed here; stories that are recreated through the artisans' hands on a canvas of stone or metal. For the convenience of "perpetual care" and the automation of mass monument production, we do not honor our deceased loved one in the same manner.

For this project I do not have the role of photographer, but I usualy take along my digital camera when I visit the cemetery. Upon each visit, I always find something I haven't seen before and I want to be prepared. I took close to 250 photos on this visit and for this blog post, I wanted to share some of the women and angels in Hollywood. Some of the other photos I will place in separate posts.

The women and angels are all quite moving keeping silent vigil over the deceased.. Each face individual, special and hauntingly expressive. Some of these I had not photographed on previous visits, some I photograph every visit. I'll start with my favorite, a mourner. The emotion I find in this piece is sad, melancholy and yet so beautiful and loving. She is so different than any other monument in Hollywood Cemetery.



She was actually a sculpture completed by Edward Valentine. The Valentines are considered one of Richmond's dynasties. Nine generations of Valentines are interred in the cemetery. Edward studied in Berlin with August Kiss. In 1865, his father died, and he decided to return to Richmond. Virginians remember Valentine most for his "Recumbant Lee", which sits upon Robert E. Lee's grave in the chapel of Washington & Lee University, Lexington, VA.



The statue of the mourning woman was a tribute from a widow to her husband. He died at the age of twenty-nine in 1871. The inscription reads, "I SHALL GO TO HIM, BUT HE SHALL NOT RETURN TO ME."





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Sarah J. Sutton











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Annie Williams








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Mary Augusta Kent Morris



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Bauer Family Monument



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Reuben Burton Family Monument









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Family Name Not Legible




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Nannie T. Pelouze

Hollywood Mystery : A Valentine Tribute

The note read:

Diana,
The tears will never dry where we cried for you.
And in our hearts the sun will always shine on you
David
January, 26, 2005

We’re working on a project which involves one of our favorite “haunts” here in the city, Hollywood Cemetery. While we were getting some photographs, we stumbled upon a rather odd site. It was a wooden, painted frog, wearing a John Lennon t-shirt. The monument was balanced and held down with granite stones and was surrounded with flowers that had long withered and browned. Their vases had fallen over and there was broken glass. There was a note written on a postcard at the base as well.

I was so intrigued by this scene, so touched by it. I took several digital pictures of it. This monument definitely stood out from all of the old traditional ones. I didn't see a headstone with her name on it and so I made a mental note of the surname on the surrounding headstones. Thinking that this was a recent grave as there was straw scattered around, I went to our local newspaper’s online obituary section when I got home. The surnames on the other headstones were Brown and so guessing, I typed “Diana Brown” into the search engine. I was lead to the archive for obits over 30 days old. The archive only provides a partial read unless you want to pay for the entire archived article. The portion to which I was given access was enough to give me her entire name. I then googled her name and was able to pull her complete obituary on a genealogy website.

Here is what I learned. Diana Brown had died on January 26, 2004. The monument we saw was a memorial to her that was placed there on the anniversary of her death. She was memorialized in a very old section of the cemetery. It was placed in the section belonging to her husband’s family. Her husband was Mr. Brown, III with the two previous D.T. Browns before him resting near her memorial. These Browns were prominent in Richmond society. Her husband’s grandfather, the first David Tucker Brown had asked Ellen Glasgow to write an article for Town & Field which she refused stating that she did not write articles. Her husband’s father, Mr. Brown, Jr. had been killed in action in Okinawah. His letters home were published in a book.

Mrs. Brown’s family is apparently also prominent here as I discovered from reading her full obituary and having an understanding of the rich history of this city. Her ancestors had come to Virginia in the 1700s and were Huguenots, escaping religious persecution in France . Perhaps her most well known ancestor was Matthew Fontaine Maury, a world-famous sea explorer and meteorologist. Maury is also buried in Hollywood Cemetery . If you conduct an internet search for him, you’ll find tons of information. One of the most interesting parts of her obituary states that she is also survived by “Hopper.” I am assuming that this wooden frog is indeed Hopper.

Even though I have discovered a lot of information about her with very few clues, I still don't know how old she was when she died, the significance of Hopper, or what kind of person she was. I suppose this is none of my business, but I found the memorial so touching and lovely. It makes me want to know more about her. Please understand that I make this blog post with the most absolute respect for Mrs. Brown and her family. It seems an appropriate story for Valentine's Day. She was obviously well-loved. Rest in Peace.

Mrs. Brown’s complete obituary.


my immortal
recorded by Evanescence


i'm so tired of being here
suppressed by all of my childish fears
and if you have to leave
i wish that you would just leave
because your presence still lingers here
and it won't leave me alone

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you cried i'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream i'd fight away all of your fears
and i've held your hand through all of these years
but you still have all of me

you used to captivate me
by your resonating light
but now i'm bound by the life you left behind
your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you cried i'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream i'd fight away all of your fears
and i've held your hand through all of these years
but you still have all of me

i've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
and though you're still with me
i've been alone all along

© 2003 Wind-Up Records

Breakfast with the Mayor


.

Our favorite eatery, River City Diner, wiped out by the forces of Gaston back in August, 2004 had reopened. The three of us, Chris, our friend Mary and I , were probably their most frequent patrons. Before Gaston, we had eaten there at least twice a day on most days and so the diner's reopening was more than a comfort to us. It was like mom had returned from a long vacation and her family could now enjoy her home cooking once again.

Saturday as Chris and I entered the diner, one of the long-time waitresses waved us over to a table where she was having a conversation with a gentleman. He was sitting there with his cup of coffee, his Sunday newspaper and a buddy dressed in a beige v-neck cashmere sweater. I looked again, this was not an ordinary gentleman, this was L. Douglas Wilder, the newly elected Mayor of Richmond. I must have looked star-struck as he smiled and waved us on over.






For those of you who don't know about Doug Wilder, you are in for a fascinating story. In 1990, Mr. Wilder became the first and only African American Governor in the United States. That's a pretty amazing accomplishment, after all Richmond was once the Capital of the Confederacy. Wilder, the grandson of slaves, was the youngest of ten children. He grew up in Richmond's Church Hill neighborhood. He attended segrated schools and graduated from Armstrong High School, one of the city's toughest. He began his college career at age sixteen at Virginia Union University.

Wilder went on to study law at Howard University and served in the Korean War and earned a Bronze Star for heroizm. In 1969 he was elected the first African American state Senator since reconstruction. He then served as Lieutenant Governor before taking the Commonwealth's top position.

Wilder is the first Mayor to be elected in sixty years. Until this past election, the Mayor was primarily a ceremonial head of Richmond appointed by the City Manager and City Council. Richmonders finally had enough of blatant cronyism. Even since my move here in 1992, there had been a string of council members and city managers serving time for everything from tax fraud to drug trafficking and use. The citizens petioned the State Legislature to change the city charter so that the Mayor of our city would actually be an elected official charged with the city's business, some to take responsibility, someone who cared about our town as a whole instead of his own agenda. If there was anyone who could answer this tough calling it would be L. Douglas Wilder.

Running against three other opponents, Wilder won seventy-five percent of the vote. A brilliant orator possessing the "Old Richmond" lilt in his accent, whether in person, on the radio, or a televised speech, he sounds as if he is addressing you personally. He's 73 years, doesn't look it and seems to have the energy of a 20 year old.

He is unafraid to make decisions that may be unpopular among those that run government agencies. He is a true steward of the people's tax dollars as well as trust. When he speaks, it is as if he is talking directly to you. You want to get involved, you want to answer the call too. He has been writing articles in the commentary of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the area's largest daily newspaper. Those articles are poinant and tell the people exactly what he is doing. Everything is out in the open which until now had been kept behind closed doors, deals made in secret meetings.

I introduced myself to the Mayor and relayed that I too live in Church Hill and how thrilled I am that he has been elected. He made me feel welcome and started asking me what I saw as issues and challenges for our city. He wondered as a citizen what ideas I may have for fixing some of our challenges or changes that we could make to make our city a better place to live, work and play. I knew he was sincere too. A few weeks ago, another citizen suggested that the pictures of the city's top one-hundred most wanted and dangerous criminals be placed on city buses so that if someone recognized one of them, they could call the autorities. It was a stellar idea and the Mayor made it a reality within a few days. The local transit autority put up the mug shots and the police started a dragnet program. Seventy-five of the top one-hundred were found and arrested.

As the Mayor Wilder states on his page of the city web site:

"This is a new beginning. There is an opportunity for all of us to reach out and reclaim and rebuild. I want to see a Richmond that doesn't just have a post office address to designate us, but rather a community that unites us."

I know he sincerely means what he says.



Read more about L. Douglas Wilder:





Virginia Governors- L. Douglas Wilder


The Story of Virginia- Douglas Wilder