Where Are They Buried? (60 page)

In his last years Walt received the homage due a great literary figure.
Leaves of Grass
has been widely translated, and his reputation is worldwide. His emphasis on native idiom, his frank approach to muses hitherto thought unsuitable to poetry, and his divergence from approved structural precepts have all contributed to his reputation as having had a profound influence on modern poetry.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of a wren.

At 54, Walt suffered a paralytic stroke and thereafter devoted much of his time to putting
Leaves of Grass
into final order; by the time he was 60, the collection’s final arrangement was settled. A sunstroke at 64 and another paralytic stroke made him increasingly dependent on others, and Walt died of complications at 72.

Walt was buried at Harleigh Cemetery in Collingswood, New Jersey.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From the center of town follow Haddon Avenue north for about a mile and the cemetery is on the right, immediately beyond the underpass of routes 30 and 130.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery at the second gate, turn left in front of the office, then take the next right. After a short distance you’ll see Walt’s tomb on the left, before the pond.

FEBRUARY 7, 1867 – FEBRUARY 10, 1957

Enticed by the free land offered to homesteaders during the 1870s, the family of Laura Ingalls Wilder moved west from Wisconsin when she was a child and settled in what is now South Dakota. From those earliest childhood days, and all through adulthood, Laura persevered through a simple but arduous life on the American frontier. She was alternately a teacher and a farmhand and occasionally submitted small pieces to newspapers through those difficult days. By her 40s, Laura secured a position at the
Missouri Ruralist
newspaper, eventually becoming its editor.

At 60 years old, Laura began to write her memoirs in a manuscript entitled
Pioneer Girl
. The concept of this book, which was essentially the entire series in one, led to the start of the
Little House
string of books, which featured stories drawn from her family’s experiences as pioneers in the mid-1800s. Written with a folksy common sense, the books celebrated a peculiarly American spirit and good humor, and the eight-part series became children’s classics. Later, the books enjoyed a revival as the basis for the
Little House on the Prairie
television series.

As Laura’s family moved frequently, a number of enterprising wind-swept towns have managed to turn her assorted homesteads into a bit of a cottage industry. There are no less than six different Wilder museums and historic sites scattered among the states of the Midwest and Great Plains.

Laura died in her sleep at 90, and was buried at Mansfield Cemetery in Mansfield, Missouri.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From Highway 60, take Business Route 60 south into the center of Mansfield. At the town center, make a right and stay on BR 60 for another half-mile, then turn right onto Lincoln Street. The Mansfield Cemetery is a short distance ahead on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery at the second drive and stop after 100 feet. About 30 feet away, on the right, you’ll see the Wilder plot.

MARCH 26, 1911 – FEBRUARY 25, 1983

By showcasing the Old South’s gentility by way of tormented and unforgettable stage characters, Thomas “Tennessee” Williams created a series of powerful portraits of the human condition, earning respect as one of the greatest playwrights in the history of American drama. His emphasis on the irrational and desperate nature of individuals in many ways mirrored his personal experience and, indeed, Tennessee confessed, “If I did not write, I’d go mad.”

Though he hailed from a prestigious Tennessee family that boasted the state’s first governor and senator, his immediate family was a bit less distinguished; Tennessee’s distant and abusive father traveled for business, his anomalous mother was never quite accepted by the genteel society she pursued, and his sister spent most of her life in mental institutions. After attending three different universities and working briefly alongside his father at a shoe company (an experience Tennessee called “a living death”), he moved to New Orleans in 1938.

In the Big Easy, he seemed to reinvent himself, starting with his name, which he legally changed to Tennessee. Having struggled with his sexuality all through his youth, Tennessee embraced the city’s liberal attitude and, with a new name, a new home, and his developing talent, fully entered gay life. After struggling for a few years, Tennessee began to write about what he knew and, after mining his past for inspiration, the pristine tenderness of
The Glass Menagerie
propelled it into a Broadway hit, making 1945 a turning point for Tennessee. The next fifteen years were his most productive:
A Rose Tattoo
,
Baby Doll
, and
Night of the Iguana
were well received by critics and popular with audiences. But it was two other works in that period, both Pulitzer Prize-winners, that sealed Tennessee’s reputation as a supreme dramatist:
A Streetcar Named Desire
traced the decline of a sensitive woman at the hands of her brother-in-law; while
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
tracked the moral decay of a Southern family, its Big Daddy character modeled after Tennessee’s own father.

But the ’60s and ’70s were less kind and, after his longtime companion and steadying influence, Frank Merlo, died in 1961, Tennessee began a long downward spiral. Suffering from depression, he lived in fear that he would go insane like his sister. He became dependent on drugs, especially alcohol and, though he owned homes in New Orleans and Key West, he often lived as a
sort of wealthy gypsy, moving frequently among hotels. Tennessee was terribly insecure and, as the quality of his work declined as a result of his personal difficulties, he got caught in a desperate and vicious circle of self-pity and violent jealousy of younger playwrights.

A monumental hypochondriac, Tennessee was obsessed with sickness and death. He worried that his heart would inexplicably stop beating and, in desperation, took pills that he didn’t need. His death at 71 came in a way he probably never expected; after a night of heavy drinking, Tennessee choked to death on a bottle cap at the luxurious midtown Hotel Elysée in New York City.

Tennessee’s will stipulated that he wished to be “buried in St. Louis,” which was particularly curious since he had no connection whatsoever to that city. However there is an historic cemetery in New Orleans, named St. Louis Cemetery, and its ornate marble tombs hold the remains of the French Quarter’s high society movers and shakers from days long passed. Unfortunately, executors of Tennessee’s estate were unaware that this was the St. Louis where he wished to be buried so they did the next best thing: They buried him in St. Louis, Missouri, at Calvary Cemetery.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Calvary Cemetery is located at 5279 W. Florrisant Ave. It’s easily found by taking Exit 29 off I-270 and traveling south for six miles. Or, you can take Exit 245B off I-70, from which point the cemetery is a mile north. (Go past Bellefontaine Cemetery first.)

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
The grounds of Calvary are very large and the roads within are numerous and mazelike, so you should stop at the office and get a map. Tennessee is buried in Section 15 and, though Section 15 comprises three smaller sections, his plot is easy to find in the northernmost area. It is the pink-tinted stone near the road.

JUNE 8, 1867 – APRIL 9, 1959

Frank Lloyd Wright is considered one of the great figures in twentieth-century architecture. After just a few years of apprenticeship, he started his own Chicago firm in 1893, and from there espoused his philosophy of “organic architecture” whose
central principle—“form and function are one”—demands that a structure be developed out of its natural surroundings.

Frank’s Prairie House residential concepts were distinguished by low-pitched rooflines, deep overhangs, and uninterrupted walls of windows merging the horizontal home into the landscape. The interior space was maximized by eliminating attics, rooms flowed into one another with half-walls, and centralized stone fireplaces, translucent ceilings, and garden areas provided environmental oneness. His 1937 Kaufmann House (now known as Fallingwater and open to the public in Pennsylvania) is a later example of Frank’s residential style.

But he was also a bold revolutionary in industrial design and departed from the lifeless arrangements favored by his contemporaries. He introduced numerous innovations, such as steel-reinforced concrete, all-glass revolving doors, indirect lighting, air conditioning, and even metal furniture. One of Frank’s more remarkable engineering developments was an earthquake-proof design that featured a cantilever construction atop a floating foundation. With a shape reminiscent of a snail’s shell, New York City’s Guggenheim Museum is an example of a Wright work that mimics a design found in nature.

In Wisconsin, Frank converted his own Taliesin home into a school and workshop for apprentice visionaries, but in 1914, tragedy struck. One night while Frank was away on business, an employee of the school went berserk and burned Taliesin to the ground. Worse, before setting the complex ablaze, he nailed the exterior doors shut except for the lower half of a Dutch door. By the time the inferno was extinguished, seven people were dead, five of whom had been bludgeoned with an ax by the deranged employee as they tried to escape through the bottom of the Dutch door. Frank’s wife and two stepchildren were among the victims.

Frank rebuilt Taliesin and later remarried. In 1938, he built Taliesin West, a winter home and school situated atop a central Arizona mesa. The 37,000-square-foot country estate includes living quarters, offices, and farm buildings that are subtly distinguished from their environment. The 600-acre complex still functions as the winter campus for the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

At 91, Frank died at Taliesin West after complications arose following an operation for an intestinal obstruction. Per his instructions, he was buried at the original Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, alongside the confessed love of his life, his mistress Mameh, who had been killed on that terrible night in 1914.
However, it seems that Frank’s second wife, Olgivanna, had her own idea about how Frank should spend eternity. Upon Olgivanna’s death in 1985, her will stipulated that Frank be exhumed and cremated, his cremains mixed with her own, and the combined remains kept in an urn at Taliesin West.

Olgivanna’s wishes were fulfilled and the urn holding their ashes is kept in Scottsdale. At the moment the urn is not available for public viewing, and is instead tucked safely away “in storage.”

NOVEMBER 20, 1946 – OCTOBER 29, 1971

On their 1969 self-titled debut, the Allman Brothers introduced a new sound that fell somewhere between earthy American blues and the untrained incandescence of British rock. On their next three classic recordings,
Idlewild South
,
At the Fillmore East
, and
Eat a Peach
, the band perfected this sound on such tunes as “Blue Sky,” “Melissa,” and “Midnight Rider,” and established itself as the premier act for this new “Southern rock.” Younger brother Gregg’s brawly but articulate vocals positioned him as leader of the group, but it was Duane’s slide guitar, played in a distillation of everything from classic wailings to eloquent phrasings and riffs, that moved the band in its trademark lengthy solos. Over the years a host of bands have drawn on their model, and though they’ve often been imitated, 40-plus years later the Allman Brothers’ efforts have not been duplicated.