Timeout for Memorial Day & cemeteries
On Sunday morning, in an ancient country cemetery hard by Lake Hudson, we snapped one of my favorite photos of all time. My granddaughter, who will be three in July, stood next to the gravestone of Lucy Hutchison.
BORN Aug. 15, 1819
DIED May 22, 1905
Lucy Hutchison is my great-great-great grandmother, which makes her Riley’s great-great-great-great-great grandmother.
This post won’t be much about sports. I actually took two days off and didn’t much in the sports world. Watched the Orland0-Cleveland game late Sunday night with heavy eyes, but I didn’t even know who won the Indy 500 until about 3 p.m. Monday, when I got around to reading the paper.
I hit five cemeteries over the weekend. Visited my dad’s grave at IOOF in Norman, my in-laws’ at Resthaven in south Oklahoma City, my brother-in-law’s at Memorial Park in north Oklahoma City, my aunt’s and uncle’s at Ross Mayes in Salina and Bryan Chapel in Boatman, a community just west of Salina, in Mayes County.
I love cemeteries on Memorial Day weekend, all the flowers and all the colors, which represent all the memories. You see opulent headstones and you see little footstones. Memorial Park has a belltower in the middle, and Saturday afternoon a man stood sentry playing bagpipes. Cool. Very cool. Resthaven has statues and mausoleums and ponds. IOOF is huge, and though it’s not all that well maintained — which chaps me — on days like this you can see someone you know. We went out Monday evening, and I ran into two old friends. Jack Herron is a former OSU basketball player from Norman, later became Guthrie’s superintendent of schools and now helps Guthrie’s Oklahoma Sports Museum. He married the daughter of Dr. Henry Easterling, my dentist the first 25 years of my life and a delightful man. I also ran into Eddy Collins, an old friend from high school, who was with two of his brothers and their dad, State Rep. Wallace Collins. The Collins family is just good folks from way back in Norman history; my dad taught Wallace in the 1950s. Small world.
But my favorite cemetery is Bryan Chapel. My dad’s family meets there every Memorial Day Sunday, 10 a.m. sharp. Out of 11 kids, only five are left from my dad’s family. But my cousins (I think we have 30 in that generation, by my last count) and spouses and their kids and grandkids make it quite the gathering.
The first gravestone in Bryan Chapel is William Tramel, a relative of some sort, and two down from him is Joe Lee Tramel, my dad’s grandfather. Then sprinkled around the rest of the 4-5 acre cemetery are other Tramels, including my grandparents’ graves, which are adorned with so many flowers, you see them driving up the country road to the cemetery.
And near the back of the cemetery is my dad’s great-grandfather, the one who lived with my dad’s family. I grew up hearing stories of how mean was the old man; my dad had to share a bed with him at times. I know my dad loved him, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t mean.
I put a flower on Charles Durlin Tramel’s grave, and one on his wife’s, and one on the grave between them, Charles Durlin Tramel’s mother-in-law, who was born 190 years ago, died before Oklahoma statehood and has only a headstone left to bear witness to her life. Those with memories of Lucy Hutchison are long since passed, too. But that headstone remains, and while Riley Argyle, born July 5, 2006, leaned against it and smiled in the sleepy Bryan Chapel Cemetery on a pristine May day, I figured that headstone was enough.
Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel.
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It is really a beautiful statement that peopl are still honoring as they should the men and women that have fallen for this country God Bless America and Rest In Peace