Here are my 10+ things about my visit to the historic Columbia Cemetery.
- Leigh went with me, which always makes everything better.
- Bizarrely, I did not really know where the cemetery is. Leigh had to
tell me. Yes, I have passed it and seen parts of it thousands of times,
but it just had not registered. Yes, I need to be more observant.
- We could not find brochures, but we had read about it before hand and asked friends about it, which was good enough for today.
- With my mobility issues, walking in a cemetery does not work for me
for more than a few minutes, so the drive had to be enough. It was still
a good experience.
- We saw many family names that I know well, and I am sure we know many of those families.
- We saw the burial place of "Blind" Boone and his wife.
- We saw a few MU presidents.
- Always fascinating to see a Jewish and "colored" sections. Glad we
do not legally segregate by black and white anymore, although I suppose
people do that a lot for themselves.
- We found a few Spence stones (no relation).
- Leigh saw the stone for a former student of hers that had died a
high school senior. Leigh and the principal had visited her in the
hospital, in her last days, and delivered her diploma. It is nice to see
people taking such good care of that particular grave.
- My generation and younger do not seem to care nearly enough about family grave sites. I am as guilty of this as anybody.
- Back in Madisonville, Kentucky, my hometown, my family has 800 or so
plots in the local cemetery, all together (stories conflict about how
we got them). There are maybe four people buried there now, and there
probably will not be many more, because we all live other places.
Several years ago, the cemetery enacted what is affectionately known as
the "Spence Tax" -- $50 for every lot sold, in the hopes that we would
eventually sell all of our extras and they would get a windfall. I
suspect they are just going to sit there, empty, pretty much forever.
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