The Four Graveyards and a Wedding Road Trip: Maplewood Cemetery

Graveyard #3 was actually kind of a bonus; we had a couple of hours to kill before leaving for the wedding Friday afternoon, and I knew I wanted to see an old gas station I’d found on the Roadtrip America website, but on the way was the Kingwood Cemetery and I could not resist the chance to see Sharon’s parents gravesite, and to be able to say goodbye to them, and thank them for Sharon and her brother.

Robert and Merle are buried next to their first son, who died young, and next to him are Robert’s parents. They’re at the slant of a nice hill, near the road (sorry about the traffic, folks), and Sharon was able to tell me a lot about the other people buried near them. Including one old guy who died while crossing Rt. 7 on his golf cart, to get his mail! What a way to go – there you are, one minute, thinking about the Publisher’s Clearing House, and then… Ouch. (Now I doubly watch out for the old guy on my road who goes to pick up his mail in a golf cart.)

Thank you, the two of you, for Sharon and Hank. You were practical people who lived a solid, practical life, and you probably thought on more than one occasion that those two kids were going to be the death of you. But for as wild as they might have seemed at times, you instilled in them both a good core, and they’re both damn fine people whom I am proud to call friends. You done good, folks. Ya done good.

The reason Robert chose this spot was that there was an old, big, shady Sugar Maple tree right at the corner; he thought it would be both good for easy direction-giving, and would give Merle some lovely shade. It up and died a few years before Merle did, and so he planted a new one… that the deer like to chew on (hence the posts around it, to deter them). Woodworking was a hobby of his, and he made the sign himself.

After a bit of time walking around, talking about the other people in the cemetery – more than a couple who were Sharon’s classmates, killed in various car accidents on Rt. 7 – it was time to head out to our next stop….