Memorial Weekend Cemetery Rounds

This year's annual Memorial Weekend trip to decorate family graves was made yesterday. It was sunny, slightly windy and very cool. We didn't linger at any of the cemeteries long and I didn't take many photos.

First stop is always at Lenox at the graves of  my husband's parents and some of his uncles and aunts. 

From there we went past the acreage of the man I wrote about in 'How The Butcher Became My Friend'. I wanted Bud to see Jim's mailbox.

It has to be the only one of its kind - an old car engine. No one should have any trouble finding his new place.

Prairie Rose was next, where my parents, sister and nephew are buried. I only took one photo here - to illustrate how saddened I am to see the decrease in the level of maintenance at the cemetery now that it is no longer in the hands of neighbors. I realize that the company caring for it now has many cemeteries to groom and that finding good workers may be difficult, but it still saddens me. Next year I will take my grass clippers along. 

Maple Grove Cemetery near Guss was next. I was pleased to see that the peonies on Grandma and Grandpa Ridnour's graves have grown and are blooming beautifully - and that the grounds in this cemetery are still very neat.

The graves of my Aunt and Uncle and cousins are nearby and while visiting those....

....I was intrigued by this man's first name, Jird. 

Whereas Bud was interested in the fact that he had been buried at sea. We speculated he might have been at Pearl Harbor, then realized he would have been too young for WWII. I decided I would try to find out more about him when I got home.

First I found his obituary which detailed a 20yr. career in the Navy and an interesting life after leaving the service. Then I went to Find A Grave (from which I borrowed the two above pictures) and was able to go back on his family tree. I knew we had a distant cousin who married a Fidler. It was his mother, Permelia Mauderly. Her's was a name I remembered because it was so different. Her parents were another of those instances of the Mauderly/Ridnour marriages resulting in double cousins.

I tried to trace the name Jird and found nothing concrete. There was a Joseph Bird Fidler and for a moment I thought Jird could be a nickname for him - the J of Joseph replacing the B in bird - but there was not a direct linear progression from the two immediately evident and I did not spend the time going back further.

The other significant find about Jird is that his wife was a Guss - the family for which the little burg was named.

Last year I planned to visit my niece's grave in the Red Oak cemetery and take a photo because I never had taken one when I was there many years ago. But Covid-19 put a halt to that.

So this year we went. Evergreen Cemetery is huge and I only had my memory of the site from about forty years ago. We wandered the area where I thought the baby section was, but couldn't locate it. (I was remembering a large area at the crest of a hill. Bud finally asked some people and an older woman knew where it was. Turned out we were actually very close. I remembered which drive correctly and the hill part. From this cemetery we went on to stop at Arlington where Jennifer's mother is buried.

On the way out of Evergreen Cemetery,  I noticed this carving. I won't forget how to get to Jennifer's grave again - just look for the owl. 

Back to Corning for lunch at Three C's Diner and on the way a big surprise just west of town -

a huge solar farm! Bud offered to go back so I could take a photo, but I said "No. That's okay." We were more interested in eating. Another borrowed photo - this one from U.S. Representative Cindy Axne's Facebook page.

The final stop was at Oakland Cemetery south of the 'once upon a time county seat town' of Quincy. Even the old schoolhouse is gone now, but we still call Oakland the Quincy Cemetery. The white peonies are from my Dad's infant sister's grave. I love them. I would like to have a bush of them.

The actual Quincy Cemetery is north of Quincy with nothing to mark it but this sign. (Also from Find A Grave.)

I would have said there were still grave stones there, but I haven't been that way for a long time. Time to go back and look?

This is a close up of those white peonies. A search tells me there is a similar one named Shirley Temple and one named Van Zyverden. Another one close in looks is the Parfum de Bloom. None of these tell how long they've been around. But I think it is certainly possible, considering how popular little Shirlety Temple was, that Grandma Lynam might have chosen one of those to put on her baby's grave. 

One last note about this year's Memorial Weekend cemetery rounds - last year on the way home we saw an eagle NE of Prescott. It was on the ground and I got a picture of it. This year, east of Lake Icaria, and NW of Prescott  we saw an eagle soaring around. What are the odds? But then the school name for their sports teams was the Prescott Eagles. Hmmm..