Everyone in Chicago is now aware of the situation at Burr Oak Cemetery.  The manager, Carolyn Towns, and three gravediggers are accused of digging up old burials and dumping the bones and shattered coffins in a disused area of the cemetery, in order to resell graves for cash – which they would then pocket, off the books.  An estimated 300 graves were violated; and, because of what appear to be deliberate attempts to obfuscate the record books, potentially thousands of other graves may now be unidentifiable.

I visited Burr Oak only once, in 2003, at the invitation of a previous manager (the suspect’s predecessor, who has not been connected to these events in any way).  She and her husband showed me the historic graves, such as Emmett Till, Dinah Washington, Otis Spann, Drew Ali…   They were very proud of their cemetery and its history, in stark contrast to the vile profiteers who desecrated it a few years later.  In 2003, the cemetery was in good condition, though there was a bit of flooding in the western portion.  Mamie Till (Emmett’s mother) had recently been entombed there, in the cemetery’s only above-ground vault, and there were plans for a museum to be built on site.

But, in spite of its history, I did not revisit Burr Oak, and I have only a handful of photos – mostly close-ups of individual markers of the famous interments.  I regret, now, that I had not obtained more landscape shots, before the cemetery became nefarious.   My preference is for Victorian architecture and monument styles, and I just don’t find flat-marker cemeteries visually appealing; and as I had only recently switched to a digital camera (Nikon D100) I was not yet in the habit of shooting everything in sight, and getting plenty of wide shots.

So Burr Oak is lost to us.  I have only a minimal record of what it looked like before the atrocity; and now it is forever tainted; once a place of history and culture, now it will be mentioned alongside the Tri-State Crematory as a horrific incident of betrayal of a sacred trust.

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Roland Burris, nominated to the U.S. Senate by corrupt governor Blagojevich, has lately been taking some flak from bloggers and news commentators for having a large monument at Oak Woods.

Burris’s monument – or mausoleum – is a grey granite structure featuring twin crypts, a small roof, and a wall with the state seal of Illinois and a list of Burris’s accomplishments and offices.   By the standards of the beautiful and historic Oak Woods, it’s not particularly spectacular.

Nevertheless, the Senator presumptive has been mocked for it – blogger “Wonkette” calls it a “terrifying death chamber”.  In the eyes of these people, Burris has committed a cardinal sin, violating the “less is more” wisdom received from Ludwig Mies.  These people apparently think that no one should aspire to stand out from a crowd, to have a monument that displays character, accomplishment, vision and artistic flair; they seem to want everyone to lie under the standard-issue granite rectangles.

This author salutes Senator Burris for having the courage to express himself, and to give the gift of a unique monument to future generations.  Though it lacks the beauty of the Victorian Gothic monuments that can also be seen at Oak Woods, it stands head and shoulders above the endless grid of anonymous grey rectangles that fill most modern cemeteries. Whatever one thinks of the Senate appointment, Burris is a man of significant accomplishments – Attorney General, Comptroller – and these deserve to be remembered.

Thank you, Senator Burris, for breaking free of the straightjacket of “less is more”, and for refusing to have merely an ordinary, unremarkable granite slab.

We are not all alike in life, why should we be alike in death?

update: Thanks to Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune for asking my opinion, and linking here from his column.

update ii: please note that this is a not a political web site – it’s a graveyard site.  Please don’t post random political arguments here.

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