Rest in Peace, Maybe
You would think that the rich, after a long and prosperous life would rest well in death. It ain’t necessarily so.
In 1941, my Mother decided to build a family mausoleum that would contain her parents and our family and a number of our descendants. She approached the appropriate committee of our local cemetery, which was established in 1866 and encompasses about 270 acres. It contains the remains of a number of distinguished individuals. Many of them, including Katharine Hepburn, who is buried not far from our plot, were famous the world over.
Mother picked out a corner lot that backed up to a small pond, which is owned by the Cemetery. It had remained vacant for a long time. The Cemetery Association had put a very high price on it due to the location and its vicinity to the small pond, which was an extraordinary backdrop for any structure.The Association sold the lot to Mother on the condition that they would have a final say over whether or not the proposed structure would properly enhance the beautiful setting. If, in their opinion it did not enhance the property, they would not allow it to be built. Mother agreed to all of the Cemetery Association’s conditions.
The Association’s members were delighted with the plans presented for our family mausoleum and work began on it. In later years, the design won a national award for such structures. Mother arranged to have the caskets of her mother and father brought from Cleveland and they rested in the Cemetery’s chapel while the new mausoleum was being built. Upon completion of the mausoleum the two caskets were re-interred in the wall of the left side of the mausoleum.
When completed, there was room for four caskets on each side of two opposing walls of marble with room for three more in the floor. Several more plots are available in the lawn in front of the front steps. A marble shelf rests below the window that looks out onto the Cemetery pond. The structure is encased in Vermont granite with two steps leading up to elaborately carved solid bronze doors that were made to order in Italy. Two Doric granite columns guard the doors.
Sometime in the seventies, the spokesman for the cemetery called Mother to tell her that some serious damage had been done to the bronze doors. An employee who had been fired by the Cemetery and who knew where all the “special care” monuments were placed decided to take revenge on his former employer. He took a loaded shotgun and fired at every single monument which had had special monies donated by their families for perpetual care. Both doors of our mausoleum took the full brunt of a frontal attack from that shotgun. It was thought at first that one side could not be repaired. Both of the doors were taken down. The mausoleum was boarded up and the doors were sent back to Italy to be repaired. In six months they came back and were re-installed. On the more badly damaged door, the bronze decoration was taken off, turned around, repaired and replaced so the more heavily damaged side was now facing to the inside of the mausoleum so that the damage would not be so easily noticed.
When my husband and I returned in November 2007 to inter my brother’s ashes, the superintendent engaged us in a conversation on the lawn as the some workers tried to remove the slab so Ted’s ashes could be interred. Unfortunately, the necessary skilled workers were not available so we had to leave my brother’s ashes on the shelf until the superintendant found the proper help to remove the slab after we left for our home 1200 miles away the next day.
After the discussion of the shotgun attack had been reviewed, the superintendant said, “Oh, you heard about the other door incident, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“The one that happened about four years ago?”
“No, no one notified me about that. Please tell me about it.”
“Well, one morning our workmen were just making their usual rounds first thing in the morning and they saw large tire tracks gouged into this lawn up to the steps of you mausoleum.”
“What kind of tracks?”
“Well, it looked as if it might have been a pretty heavy pick-up truck. We found a piece of the rope they had used.”
“Rope?”
“Yeah, we figure they came up here, put heavy ropes around the handles of the doors, attached the rope to the pick-up truck and then they tried to pull the bronze door off your mausoleum. Bronze doors like that can bring pretty good money as decoration. Or, at the very least, they could have sold the bronze as scrap metal.”
I was speechless.
Jim said, “Well you have to be pretty desperate to try something like that!”
“Yeah,” laughed the supervisor. “Equal parts drunk and/or stupid too!”
He continued, “You’ll notice, Mrs. Mulholland, that we took the handles off the door so someone can’t try that again.” As the doors had been swung open so the workmen could enter before we had arrived, I had not noticed that the handles were gone. When I looked back and looked at the doors, it did, indeed, look a little strange. One’s eye notices that something about the symmetry of the doors is amiss.
“What did you do with the handles?
“Oh, I think we just threw them away.”
I didn’t know what to say.
The supervisor added another little bit as we turned toward the car. “We also decided to put bullet proof Plexiglas over the window facing the pond because the kids come out here and use mausoleum windows as BB gun targets.”
You would think that the rich, after a long and prosperous life would rest well in death. It ain’t necessarily so.
In 1941, my Mother decided to build a family mausoleum that would contain her parents and our family and a number of our descendants. She approached the appropriate committee of our local cemetery, which was established in 1866 and encompasses about 270 acres. It contains the remains of a number of distinguished individuals. Many of them, including Katharine Hepburn, who is buried not far from our plot, were famous the world over.
Mother picked out a corner lot that backed up to a small pond, which is owned by the Cemetery. It had remained vacant for a long time. The Cemetery Association had put a very high price on it due to the location and its vicinity to the small pond, which was an extraordinary backdrop for any structure.The Association sold the lot to Mother on the condition that they would have a final say over whether or not the proposed structure would properly enhance the beautiful setting. If, in their opinion it did not enhance the property, they would not allow it to be built. Mother agreed to all of the Cemetery Association’s conditions.
The Association’s members were delighted with the plans presented for our family mausoleum and work began on it. In later years, the design won a national award for such structures. Mother arranged to have the caskets of her mother and father brought from Cleveland and they rested in the Cemetery’s chapel while the new mausoleum was being built. Upon completion of the mausoleum the two caskets were re-interred in the wall of the left side of the mausoleum.
When completed, there was room for four caskets on each side of two opposing walls of marble with room for three more in the floor. Several more plots are available in the lawn in front of the front steps. A marble shelf rests below the window that looks out onto the Cemetery pond. The structure is encased in Vermont granite with two steps leading up to elaborately carved solid bronze doors that were made to order in Italy. Two Doric granite columns guard the doors.
Sometime in the seventies, the spokesman for the cemetery called Mother to tell her that some serious damage had been done to the bronze doors. An employee who had been fired by the Cemetery and who knew where all the “special care” monuments were placed decided to take revenge on his former employer. He took a loaded shotgun and fired at every single monument which had had special monies donated by their families for perpetual care. Both doors of our mausoleum took the full brunt of a frontal attack from that shotgun. It was thought at first that one side could not be repaired. Both of the doors were taken down. The mausoleum was boarded up and the doors were sent back to Italy to be repaired. In six months they came back and were re-installed. On the more badly damaged door, the bronze decoration was taken off, turned around, repaired and replaced so the more heavily damaged side was now facing to the inside of the mausoleum so that the damage would not be so easily noticed.
When my husband and I returned in November 2007 to inter my brother’s ashes, the superintendent engaged us in a conversation on the lawn as the some workers tried to remove the slab so Ted’s ashes could be interred. Unfortunately, the necessary skilled workers were not available so we had to leave my brother’s ashes on the shelf until the superintendant found the proper help to remove the slab after we left for our home 1200 miles away the next day.
After the discussion of the shotgun attack had been reviewed, the superintendant said, “Oh, you heard about the other door incident, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“The one that happened about four years ago?”
“No, no one notified me about that. Please tell me about it.”
“Well, one morning our workmen were just making their usual rounds first thing in the morning and they saw large tire tracks gouged into this lawn up to the steps of you mausoleum.”
“What kind of tracks?”
“Well, it looked as if it might have been a pretty heavy pick-up truck. We found a piece of the rope they had used.”
“Rope?”
“Yeah, we figure they came up here, put heavy ropes around the handles of the doors, attached the rope to the pick-up truck and then they tried to pull the bronze door off your mausoleum. Bronze doors like that can bring pretty good money as decoration. Or, at the very least, they could have sold the bronze as scrap metal.”
I was speechless.
Jim said, “Well you have to be pretty desperate to try something like that!”
“Yeah,” laughed the supervisor. “Equal parts drunk and/or stupid too!”
He continued, “You’ll notice, Mrs. Mulholland, that we took the handles off the door so someone can’t try that again.” As the doors had been swung open so the workmen could enter before we had arrived, I had not noticed that the handles were gone. When I looked back and looked at the doors, it did, indeed, look a little strange. One’s eye notices that something about the symmetry of the doors is amiss.
“What did you do with the handles?
“Oh, I think we just threw them away.”
I didn’t know what to say.
The supervisor added another little bit as we turned toward the car. “We also decided to put bullet proof Plexiglas over the window facing the pond because the kids come out here and use mausoleum windows as BB gun targets.”
Holy 'crimony! What a mess! So what happens when you are alive and rich?
ReplyDeleteJim D.
I think that must have been a great surprise for them when they came to work that day! We've all heard about desecration of graves but this take the cake!
ReplyDeleteJD in the south.