Norfolk missed chance to toast city's historic graveyards

An attitude adjustment. That's what Norfolk's stodgy leaders need. Beginning with their attitudes about alcohol and ending with their attitudes about death.

Last time I checked, Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Yet antiquated state laws and odd notions about liquor linger, telegraphing the curious message that while alcohol may be lawful, it's still a sin.

Sorry, not in my church. Probably not in yours, either.

Yet temperance-tainted prohibitions against drinking in public (drinking in private is preferable?) remain on the books - in Norfolk and elsewhere - giving politicians the power to tell the rest of us where we can legally enjoy a beer or a glass of wine.

Case in point: Last week, city officials refused to allow a Halloween party to raise money for Hope House and Friends of Norfolk's Historic Cemeteries in a vacant part of a graveyard. The reason? Booze isn't allowed in city parks - except for Town Point and Ocean View.

That needs to change.

While we're talking attitude adjustments, it would be refreshing if Norfolk - and everywhere else - adopted some enlightened ideas about death, too. It wasn't that long ago that the deceased were laid out at home, where the family and neighbors kept vigil until the burial. Not a particularly sanitary practice, but one that demystified death.

Today, the dead are rolled out the back doors of hospitals and surreptitiously sent to funeral homes, where they are primped for a quick viewing before they are laid to rest in some soulless cemetery, in grave sites topped by flat, cookie-cutter markers.

There was a time - the Victorian era, according to Norfolk's Bureau of Cemeteries website - when graveyards doubled as parks. They were designed to be bucolic places with trees, meandering pathways and benches, where families would "have a picnic, take a stroll, spend a Sunday afternoon."

Norfolk is home to several of these stunning cemeteries. What a pity more people don't enjoy their ambiance. On a sunny morning this week, I wandered - alone - for several hours through Cedar Grove and Elmwood cemeteries, which span the 200 block of Princess Anne Road.

Elmwood's picnic area, beside the cemetery office, is the would-be site of the Halloween party, which organizers had promised would be "respectful and restrained." The presence of sawbuck tables suggest that the proposed soiree would not be the first time folks gathered there for recreation. I'm guessing it wouldn't have been the first time liquor was consumed inside those iron gates, either.

The city's cemeteries boast both majestic monuments and modest markers and are populated by surnames familiar to anyone who has lived in Hampton Roads for a while: Willcox, Malbon, Roper, Whitehurst, Selden, Sessoms, Stant, Venable, Grandy and Dabney, among them.

Like all old cemeteries, these are also the final resting places for a shocking number of children. It's impossible to read the neat, chiseled lettering on the headstone of the unnamed "Infant son of Beulah and Smith Wilson, Born and Died on May 21, 1909" without thinking of the tears that must have soaked the ground as this baby was laid to rest 102 years ago.

Over in Cedar Grove, I paused by the odd, bolster-shaped headstone of "Mrs. Mary Winnifred Wise" who died in 1873 at the age of 23. Nestled beside her well-preserved headstone is a tiny white granite marker with writing that has weathered away. Her infant, perhaps?

Yet, when it came to luring the public inside these city treasures, it was Councilman Paul Riddick's point of view that prevailed.

"It would not be respectful to the people buried in these cemeteries" to stage a gala so near the graves, he declared.

Once again, Riddick is wrong.

In fact, the best way to disrespect the dead is to leave their grave sites unvisited.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net