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.