Down Cemetery Row

On this episode of Our American Stories, Our American Stories listener Bill Bryk gives us a tour of his local cemetery in Antrim, New Hampshire—and paints a picture of people buried there, and their lives well lived.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about well just about everything here
on this show. And one of our favorite regular features
is a feature called Final Thoughts. And today our regular
contributor Bill Brake tells us a story from his little
town Antrim, New Hampshire.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Andrim's voters elected me a cemetery trustee in twenty eighteen.
I'd help two other trustees govern the town's for public cemeteries.
It's meant receiving occasional telephone calls from relatives of deceased
persons who wanted to be buried in Antrim. Among the
usual reasons for this or that the deceased was born

(00:59):
or spent many happy summers in the town. The callers
generally asked about getting the grave dug. I gather the
correct term of art is opening the grave. I referred
them to a pleasant, good natured and compassionate gentleman with
a back hoe who performs this office for a funeral
parlor in the neighboring town of Hillsborough, and for anyone
else in the area who needs his services. Antram's public

(01:23):
cemeteries are Center Meetinghouse, Hill, North Branch and Over East.
I visited them all before my election. The town's Department
of Highways had maintained them well. Three of the four
are now full with many dark gray, heavily weathered slate
markers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Only North Branch

(01:46):
is active, which is to say new customers are welcome. Recently,
after a friendly and sympathetic chat with an older woman
who wishes to bury her son's remains here, I strolled
down to Cemetery Road, a well kept dirt road that
borders my property, just beyond an unnamed stream that flows
from my land towards Steele's Pond and the North Branch River.

(02:09):
It was amidst the heat wave in mid July twenty nineteen.
The slightest breeze was welcome. As is usually the case
with rural dirt roads, the trees lining both sides of
the right of way had grown tall and large enough
to form a kind of green tunnel, which I found
beautiful and soothing. Some of the older trees where the

(02:29):
top of the hills seemed to have grown as mirrors
of one another, their upper branches entwined. Perhaps they are
ideal lovers, growing side by side and together completing one another,
I reached the cemetery and found the second gate open.
So I entered and found my caller's family plot. It
is large and inspires confidence that her relatives will find

(02:51):
room there long after I am gone. When I was
a child, my family lived at fifty seven Columbia Street
in Mohawk, New York. House my parents owned. It was
across from the Mohawk Cemetery. My mother occasionally noted that,
whatever one might say about a cemetery, its occupants were
quiet neighbors. I often walked through it. I found the

(03:13):
markers a kind of history book, nearly all bearing the
names of ordinary people whose lives were quietly lived in
a small town away from the shouting and tumult of
the great world. The Mohawk Cemetery had only one distinguished occupant,
France's Elias Spinner, who had been Herkmer County sheriff, a

(03:35):
militia general, a three term US representative, once Democrat twice
a Republican, and Treasurer of the United States under Presidents Lincoln,
Johnson and Grant. He was also the first federal executive
to hire women for clerical work on the same basis
as men. He was renowned for his flamboyantly elaborate signature,

(03:55):
which appeared on millions of United States notes. He had
developed it consciously to discourage counterfeiting. The signature appears on
his grave marker in the Mohawk Cemetery. It also appears
on the plinth of his monument across the Mohawk River
in Herkimer, New York, which also bears this quotation. The
fact that I was instrumental in introducing women to employment

(04:18):
in the offices of the government gives me more real
satisfaction than all the other deeds of my life. Coming
back to my summer's day in the North Branch Cemetery,
I paused for a few moments to look north across
the valley of the North Branch River toward Campbell Mountain
in Hillsborough. Then I went down the rows of stones,

(04:41):
noting several fellows who cantered off with the New Hampshire
Dragoons during the Civil War, and a quantity who had
served in World Wars one and two. One fellow had
served in both when I was a boy. Such men
and women call themselves retreads. There were also a few
who had served in Vietnam. There were also a f
few revolutionaries, mostly identified by the militia company in which

(05:03):
they had served. Although I know he's buried in North Branch,
I couldn't find a marker for the long lived George
Gates born August eighth, seventeen fifty three and died December thirteenth,
eighteen forty five. He had fought at Bunker Hill on
June seventeenth, seventeen seventy five, among those commanded don't fire

(05:27):
until you see the whites of their eyes, and helped
prove as One British officer wrote that the Americans are
full as good soldiers as ours. One fellow named Tuttle,
an old New England family, had a few small stones
placed atop his marker. It's a touching custom derived from
the Jews, flowers, fade stones and dewer. Perhaps a secular

(05:52):
meaning might be found too, As long as one is
remembered by someone, one never truly dies. So I found
a suitable pebble in the dirt road I was on
and placed it among the others on the tunnel marker.
Two markers were particularly memorable. One read Archie F. Perry

(06:15):
eighteen eighty six nineteen fifty an honest man. There are
worse things for which to be remembered. The other was
a bench for a member of an old Antrim family
whose relatives I know. It reads Dennis C. Gales Senior,
nineteen forty three to two thousand and eight. We sit
here thankfully he was the man. He didn't have to be.

(06:38):
There were several other benches about North Branch. They reminded
me of the nineteenth century custom of picnicking in cemeteries,
bringing the baskets to the family plots. Before Sir Alexander
Fleming identified penicillin, death was a constant visitor for many families.
Perhaps this custom allowed people to share good times with

(06:58):
their deceased relatives. It waned by the twenties as early
deaths became less common. The peenchas also reminded me of
Conrad Aiken, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet and man of
letters who retired to Savannah, where he had been born.
He often sat by his parents grave in Bonaventure's cemetery,
at least in part for the view of the harbor

(07:19):
and of the arriving and departing merchantmen. He once saw
a ship with an intriguing name heading down to the sea.
He did some research at the port authority where he
confirmed the ship's name and looked up her destination. That
information gave him a two line poem, Aiken's tombstone is
a bench. He wanted people to sit and enjoy a

(07:41):
Martini by his grave on it is the poem which
is his epitaph Cosmos Mariner destination unknown.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
And great job as always to Robbie Davis for his
work you're at our American Stories. And a special thanks
to Bill Brike for this piece. He's one of our
regular contributors and just a great voice. And my goodness,
I keep thinking of Archie F. Perry eighteen eighty six
to nineteen fifty and all it says on his grave

(08:19):
marker are three words an honest man. It doesn't get
better than that. And by the way, we'd love to
hear your final thought stories, stories about death, stories from
people who are in their final days. There are not
more interesting stories than that, or it could even just
be a eulogy. My goodness, the eulogies we heard from

(08:40):
the Kobe Bryant memorial, from the memorial of Arnold Palmer,
which is it's some of the best material we've ever
put on the air. The storytelling is so beautiful again.
Send all of your stories and suggestions to our American
stories dot com. Bill brike are of his storytelling from

(09:01):
the little part of America called Antrim, New Hampshire. Here
on our American Story