Stopping by the cemetery on a twilight evening

CINTHIA RITCHIE

July 03, 2008 at 1:44PM AKST

It’s late at night during the summer solstice, and I’m standing in the Seward American Legion Cemetery with 40 or so other people. We’re dressed in jackets and hats; the smell of bug repellent spreads out among us, mixed with the scent of grass and clover.

We’re here for Lee Poleski’s third annual Summer Solstice Cemetery Tour. It’s a strange thing to do on the longest day of the year, and we are undoubtedly a strange lot.

But no matter. We are here to learn more about the people buried in the city’s cemetery.

The grass is very green, the trees lush, the sky a lavender blue twilight that lends a mysterious air.

As we move from gravestone to gravestone, we stand apart from one another, and we don’t talk much. Poleski’s voice is authoritative but warm as he reads pieces of history intertwined with obituaries.

With his long white beard, wrinkled brown coat and glasses sliding down his nose, he looks like an eccentric professor.

The second grave is that of Nold Neal, a 37-year-old man who committed suicide on Aug. 7, 1937. No one knows why he did it, and as we all lean in closer, we are fascinated by the idea of someone taking his own life, we want to know more.

But alas, history can only tell so much and soon we move to the next gravestones:

Eugene Moe Lanier, former Seward mayor, 1917-1977.  

Harvey Sullivan, U.S. Marshall, 1874-1936

Derek Lane, 1874-1938

It’s alluring to hear small pieces of these peoples’ stories. We gather in a circle, closer now, as if all this talk about death is drawing us together. The old-fashioned obituaries are eloquent, and they lend a bittersweet air:

“Death visited Thomas … ,” Poleski reads, “Death visited Seward and took Claudia Sexton ... .” We nod our heads because for some reason it feels right to hear death talked about in such a solemn way.

Then it is time to traipse through trees and around lush spreads of violets and over to the gravestone of what Poleski calls “the only Seward poet to read his poem in front of a U.S. president.”

The story of Sven Lundblad, 1863-1933, is as strange as the evening. He was a poet of rather dubious talent who did indeed read his work to President Harding though, as Poleski points out before reading the said poem, “He may not have been a good poet.”

And he wasn’t. The poem is awful in its enthusiasm and feigned grandeur. It is a poem like life itself: Too big and smug and self-conscious to be taken seriously.

We all laugh. We draw even closer. We talk and whisper amongst ourselves while in the grass beyond us, a small girl in a bright patchwork dress laughs and runs on chubby legs.

The last story is a grisly one, “And what better way to end the evening,” Poleski chuckles.

John Timberlake Madnick, 1800-1831, was another probable suicide. His decomposed body washed up to the shore, and he was dressed in dark, every pocket filled with rocks. Seaweed tangled around his body.  

For some reason, this cheers us up, not the fact that Madnick died but that we are all still alive.

Maybe it’s a result of the solstice, or the energy of the night, or the knowledge that we will die too but probably not for a long time, for the mood changes. As we walk back to our cars, we are no longer quiet, we talk and laugh. A few of us run.

Our hearts beat faster. We are giddy with the grace of those long-ago deaths.

Cinthia Ritchie can be reached at (907) 342-2428 or toll free at (800) 770-9830, ext. 428.