Clues to the mystery of two cemeteries

You enter the Seward Memorial 1897  gate, and you see this. Being judgmental, I immediately assume it's just rednecks. Then I see a veteran's grave. What is the difference I ask, from the veterans across the intersection of Seward Road in southern Logan County? I don't get it. Except the graves are poorer. So I keep looking, occasional traffic driving by, wondering what I'm up to. The meadowlarks and mockingbirds sing here, just as they did across the road. Then something else catches my eye. Poorer doesn't explain it.

I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. I know I'm naive, but I don't get it. Do you?
Slowly it sinks in as I wander through this cemetery, not as well kept as the other across the road. Here's another clue. There is dignity here--not fancy marble gravestones, but people remembered, some with concrete blocks and wooden crosses. I keep wandering around, taking photos, and I come across more veteran's graves.

Here's another clue on this gravestone. A WWI vet, a member of the Pioneer Infantry. I don't know that term, do you? But not buried with brothers in arms across the road. Why? He is buried not far from a WWII vet, and from two obviously related vets, probably a grandfather and a grandson. Why here? I don't know, until I wander over into the remote parts of the cemetery, and see two fairly recent graves, with persons' photos on  them. Then, I ask, I wonder....? Do you get it yet?

And then, I see the signs at the other entrance to the cemetery.  The graves are still decorated, the veterans still served. What's the difference?

Scripture endures

Mystery of two cemeteries, part 1--Saturday sightings

I came across this tattered flag in a rural cemetery today, a cemetery filled with veteran's graves. It was one of those Saturdays to spend meandering through the country.
North of Edmond in Logan County I came to Seward Road, and there were two graveyards, one on the northeast corner "Seward Cemetery" and one on the southwest corner, "Seward Memorial 1897." They're old, and I stopped at the northeast one because I could see some old gravestones.

It wasn't until I visited the one catty-corner from it that I discovered a mystery, a mystery answered by calling a Guthrie funeral home, and doing a little research on the computer when I got home.

Can you guess? We've zoomed past Seward Road hundreds of times on I-35 a few miles east of here, never thinking about how the road got its name. Most folks who turn off it, go east to the Lazy-E Arena, I suspect. I had driven north on the backroads, eventually  ending up on what is Broadway, but north of Waterloo road. It was cloudy and a morose kind of day for me, and the cemeteries were just there waiting for me. Solving the mystery was the best reward, after wandering around, taking photos of veterans and other graves, wondering about the stories.
Before I tell you about the mystery, the other mystery was why there were so many veterans graves in the first one. It's out in the country, but there were more than 20 veterans graves there, starting with veterans of the Civil War and Mexican War.

The oldest veterans' grave I found belonged to this man, buried in 1898. Most of the graves of the Civil War veterans you have no idea when they lived or died, because they're identified just by their units. Twentieth Century graves identify people by what service they were in. Civil War graves list their states and units--and here were graves from Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Indiana infantries. They're also distinctive, with their whitish gray marble and slightly rounded tops. I think it is remarkable that people still decorate these old graves. How American.
This cemetery also has newer graves, including veterans of WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Here's the most recent I found.

It's interesting to me that he lived and served about the same times as my uncle Mike who died in October.

One footnote before we return to the mystery. I found this grave, of someone who would be my age, but he  never made it. His name must be on the Vietnam Wall in Washington. Can you imagine the heartbreak of parents and loved ones? Why do I visit, why am I interested in cemeteries and veterans graves? I guess it is mortality, and history, but there's more. I hoped to find a Confederate's grave...they are scattered throughout Oklahoma, but I didn't here. Still, there are so many stories to tell.
Now, back to the mystery of the two cemeteries.  I'll post more veterans graves photos later.

Mother's Day journeys, no silence in my memories

Francis Faye Culp Clark

1909-1980

Sunday I will head south into memory.

It took a long time for me to begin this annual trip, I'm sad to say. But now, I look forward to the trip
to the cemetery a mile west of Waurika, Oklahoma, where the prairie wind never seems to stop. After we moved from the little town where Mom lved with us until she died, I avoided coming back to the grave and planting flowers.

My brother Jerry at the grave.

But for the past several years, as I've faced my own mortality more and more, and had my own deaths and tragedies.and missed her more and more, I always look forward to talking with her again. Oh, I know she's not at that grave, but for some reason I know I can talk with her there...she and me, alone.
In the morning of Mother's Day, I put a garden trowel in the car, and stop and buy a gallon of water, and a few flowering plants from Lowe's, preferably ones that will last longest in sunlight. Then I head down the Bailey Turnpike to Chickasha, and south on US 81, back through memories of Rush Springs and Marlow and Duncan and especially Comanche...through Addington to Waurika, county seat of Jefferson County, where we lived for 12 years owning the Waurika News-Democrat, and she with us for a few years, till she got cancer and died a couple of weeks after her birthday in that 100 degree heat storm that lasted more than 30 days.
I'll go down some old WPA 1930s pavement, listening to the thump, thump, thump of the tires, and then after passing through Waurika, up the hill on US 70, pul off the pavement, and listen to my tires crunching across the pavement, and the meadowlarks singing, till I come to her grave.
I'll get out and come talk to her, and use the trowel to clean off the grass intruding on her grave, and dig down at the stone to plant the flowers some of the dirt from last year still there. I'll plant most of the red flowers, use a lot of the water to saturate the ground. No plastic flowers for my Momma's grave. She loved real ones. Yes, they'll eventually die, but so what? Better than fake. More of the water will wash off the stone, and the wind will soon dry it off, except for the water lingering in the incisions on the stone--her name and dates. They fade last, like my memories.

Reunion of memories

Such a travesty to summarize a life with so few words...no love, no memories, no humor...but that awaits us all. And then I kneel down, and talk. Our conversations are private and personal. I know she hears me. I sure hear her. Last year my brother Jerry and I were there. I'm sure he talked to her in his own way too. I'll lean over, and kiss that grave, because I can no longer kiss her.
Then I'll leave, meander through Waurika and memories and joys and regrets where we lived and worked. I'll head north 15 miles to Comanche, and stop at my Dad's grave, clean his grave, plant some flowers, and talk some more then I'll head home.
Silence is part of the trip... No radio, other distractions, other than wind and birds. But there is no silence in my memories.

Mother's Day thoughts

“Those are Momma’s glasses,” I said to myself.

I was digging through an old box in the garage recently, rummaging through old letters, faded photographs, artifacts of earlier times.

There they were--thin gold octagonal wire frames, around slightly scratched bifocals. Beside them was a Mothers Day card colored on torn, faded construction paper by a little boy named Terry. There were yellowed photos of a young woman and friends in flapper dresses and old cars, brittle brown envelopes with three-cent stamps  and hand-writing scribbled on them, postmarked in Texas in the 1920s and 30s.

I was sitting on the concrete floor, trying to straighten up and sort through the boxes one more time...you know, a typical weekend chore. Among the boxes of junk--junk that is too valuable to be thrown away, but you don't know what to do with--were baby pictures, kid pictures, young adult pictures that record the passing of time in individuals, in families.

There are days like that, family reunion days. You sit and visit with people you’ve known for years, watching them grow older. Some with walkers, some with oxygen tubes, kids and grandkids and great grandkids scrambling around, people feasting on a smorgasbord of food and faces and family. 

And then you think about them watching you grow older... like the stuff that spills out of an old box. A guest book of a wedding or a funeral, scribbled family history notes with dates of births and marriages and deaths of brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, children. 

Mom's coin purse

Tears of memories fill small items like a tiny black leather coin purse stuffed with a black and white photo of a young woman, carried by my mother 80 years ago.

Mom and Jerry at his graduation
from Lubbock Christian with the glasses

Certificates of membership, graceful handwriting you immediately recognize...even though she’s been gone 30 years now, and the boxes they’re crammed in. Old magazines, newspaper clippings.

A musty smell of growing older, perfumed slices of time frozen in eternity. They bring tears, until you think about your own children growing older, and what they’ll look at and remember some day when they’re sifting through boxes, wondering when certain snapshots were taken, who  those other people were. The tears are of sadness and regrets and memories, but not of growing older. 

Years and memories are like children, and like boxes full of mementoes, the more you have the fuller your life becomes.

I picked up Momma’s glasses and looked through them briefly, and they gave me a new outlook on all those boxes in our lives.

Mom, with glasses and the first five grandchildren, in Waurika
Vance, Dallas, Becky, Derrick and Vance

Graduation, again

It's an up mood-down mood time of year for me. Nothing makes me more aware of the passing of time than graduation. I've taken part in 40 or more of these now, and there is such a sense of accomplishment and pride, mixed with a sense of loss.

With Jill Kelsey

The smiles on the faces of the students, the introductions to parents and grandparents, the "Hey, Dr. Clark" greetings. They make me smile. I like clapping for the favorite students as they cross the stage, giving them a thumbs up, and afterwards, shaking their hands, hugging, getting my photo taken.

And then you walk away, take off the robe and funny hat, put it away. Some of the students stay in touch, some become friends, others are vibrant memories, and many become faces and names on the edges of my memory.

In the hall of the Communications Building we put up plaques each year listing all the graduates. I recently went there and started trying to put faces with the names etched in metal. It gets harder and harder, because the department has grown and changed, with more than 100 graduates a year, and my changing duties as well.

With Sherri Ward

But I see my reflection in those plaques, on several levels, and many of the students have become good friends. Thanks to Facebook I've reconnected with more. I'm fortunate in that I almost can't go anywhere in Oklahoma City that I don't run into  former students.

The other change is in myself and my colleagues. This year, colleague Mark Zimmerman, who once was my student, and then employee, took photos of me with Jill Kelsey and Sherri Ward. They're both in the midst of change in their lives, and Jill is retiring. This will be her last graduation. I hired both these people, and they were the first females in the department faculty. They have been excellent teachers, admired and loved by students. For me, they've become more excellent friends.

That's graduation.