All Hallows' Eve

A walk through Hollywood Cemetery is a journey through Richmond's past. Today I happened upon J.E.B. Stuart's grave (above) and the tomb of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Ellen Glasgow. (Don Dale photo, 2010)

Richmond's favorite cemetery wasn't very spooky this afternoon.

Perhaps it was just because it was Halloween, but for whatever reason I decided to take a break and spend a quiet hour or so walking through Hollywood Cemetery. It was a peaceful way to spend part of a sunny afternoon.

In my ramble, I happened upon J.E.B. Stuart's grave with its small Confederate flags and large obelisk. I heard a low voice from the other side of a bush. When I backed up to take a picture of Stuart's grave, I saw the middle-aged bicyclist who had stopped to use his cell phone.

In front of a mausoleum a few yards away, a gray-haired couple sat on a bench in the sun, admiring fresh flowers on a grave. Members of a walking tour murmured in the distance as they followed their guide. A family with two small children spread a blanket beside one of Hollywood's winding roadways. They had a picnic, with a large bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Below, the James River caught the sun.

Hollywood Cemetery wasn't named for the town in Southern California. It predates the movies by a half century. The name came from the holly trees that covered a commanding bluff overlooking the James River.

A little history:

Richmond's cemeteries were filling up. Hollywood was meant to solve two problems: the need for burial space and a yearning for green space. Designed in 1847, the cemetery was not without opposition. Those against it said it would hold back the city's westward expansion. Others feared that runoff from decaying corpses would foul the city's water supply. Neither of those potential consequences has occurred.

A century and a half later, the cemetery celebrates nature. Mature trees and shrubbery are everywhere, and a story that wants to be told seems to materialize at every turn. Paths wind through markers that approach the heights of fine art.

More than 75,000 people are buried at Hollywood, including three presidents (Monroe, Tyler and Davis). Other tombs, no less grand, bear names known now mostly to historians: Douglas Freeman, Lewis Powell, Mary Munford, Virginius Dabney, Ellen Glasgow and James Branch Cabell. Lewis Ginter, the tobacco magnate who is as big in death as he was in life, is buried in Hollywood's largest mausoleum. His tomb has windows made by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Some graves are more recent, and a very few are fresh.

Hollywood Cemetery on this quiet Sunday afternoon was a good place for a walk. This garden of stone is as much a place for the living as for the dead.

NOTE: Those of you who remember Mae, the blind cat I wrote about on Oct. 11, will be happy to hear she has a new home. Tamsen at the SPCA e-mailed me last week with the good news.