oh no, not again

[calimac]

In the course of writing my previous post on women in SF, I happened to look up some older women authors on Wikipedia to check out their eras of publication, because I was thinking of adding a bit about some of them as well.

And that's when I learned the distressing and annoying fact that Zenna Henderson is buried in a cemetery in a small rural Arizona town called St. David.

What's distressing and annoying about it is that I was just there! I was! I drove right through town on my Arizona trip. And I didn't know! I may never be back there again, and now, just after getting home, do I learn that I missed out on this rare opportunity to pay my respects at a beloved author's grave.

Not only that, this isn't the first time this has happened. A couple decades ago, I had just completed the closest thing to a long cross-country drive I've made as an adult, from Michigan to California, when I happened to learn that Philip K. Dick is buried in the unlikely town of Fort Morgan, Colorado. (I think his father had once lived there and bought a family plot, or something. But PKD had no personal connection to the place. At least Zenderson was from southern Arizona, which should have come to mind.)

And what windswept eastern Colorado town had I actually briefly stopped at for a break on my long drive? Fort Morgan. Had I known ...? No.

There are some cases where I've gotten to graves. On a couple of occasions in pursuit of data about obscure Tolkien-related figures, I've gone to their hometowns to look for information in the back files of the local newspaper, which can be found in no other library; and the information includes that they're buried in a local cemetery. So I go out to pay my respects, and on one occasion learned from the office that the grave, even over half a century later, was still unmarked. I thought that very sad.

Comments

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

We dodged a bullet on this one on our Loncon 3 trip - if I'd thought about it I would have realized that Tolkien was buried in Oxford but it never occurred to me. Luckily, we were traveling with fans who not only knew but wanted to stop to pay their respects.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I didn't mention Tolkien himself, whose grave I've visited 3 or 4 times, because for me its location is such a basic fact of knowledge that there's no surprise in finding it.

It's useful to be reminded that this is not the case for everyone who might want to go there.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have expected you to mention Tolkien - it was my anecdote, not yours :->

And, as I noted, it's not that I would have had no idea where Tolkien is buried, it's that it didn't occur to me to think "Hmmm, we're going to Oxford, we could visit Tolkien's grave."

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It's just that I wrote "There are some cases where I've gotten to graves" and didn't mention that.

And yes, I know the difference between a surprising location (PKD) and one that makes perfect sense once you're consciously aware of it (Henderson).

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Not exactly the Henderson case as you describe it - sounds like you didn't know where Henderson was buried until after you'd visited the place. As I just stated, I knew all along Tolkien was buried in Oxford, I just didn't think of visiting his grave once I realized we were traveling there until someone else thought of it.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

What you wrote at first was "if I'd thought about it I would have realized that Tolkien was buried in Oxford but it never occurred to me." That sounds as if you hadn't known for a fact specifically that Tolkien was buried there, just that you knew he lived in Oxford so it was a logical place for him to be buried, if it had crossed your mind to think of it. (That doesn't necessarily follow, of course. PKD lived almost all his life somewhere or other in California, but he wasn't buried here.)

That's the case with Zenderson. I knew she was from southern Arizona - her stories are often set there - so it's a logical place for her to be buried. If it had crossed my mind to think of it, I could have looked it up.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

In the comment to which you replied, I said "as I noted, it's not that I would have had no idea where Tolkien is buried, it's that it didn't occur to me to think "Hmmm, we're going to Oxford, we could visit Tolkien's grave."

Even if my original comment wasn't clear, that should have been.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, I read that in the context of the earlier comment. The wording is entirely consistent with a position of, "I don't know for sure that Tolkien is buried in Oxford, but I'd lay a bet that he is."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm always surprised how little fuss there is about Conan Doyle's grave, a few miles from my childhood home in Minstead in the New Forest. Last time I went a broken pipe bowl was the only recent acknowledgement of him as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. In nearby Lyndhurst lies the grave of "Mrs Reginald Hargreaves", aka Alice in Wonderland. I was sad to think that Alice was dead, of course, but shocked to learn that she had grown up.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That IS annoying. I would have stopped for Zenna Henderson.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's ever occurred to me to visit the grave of an author, or even to find out where it is. But if one has that inclination, Zenna Henderson is a deserving choice; I lately reread all of the "People" stories and found them still worthwhile.

More than a decade ago, I visited a friend in Amherst for her fiftieth birthday, and while walking about, I passed the Dickinson house. But it was closed then, so I only saw the outside. It would have been interesting to see what kind of space Dickinson inhabited (somehow "haunted" almost seems appropriate).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've never gone far out of my way to seek out a grave. But if I happen to be in the area anyway and know it's there, I may pay it a visit. I've visited the 3 major Inklings' graves, I've visited the grave of W.S. Gilbert and the memorial to Arthur Sullivan in London. On a different note, whenever I'm in Milwaukee, I always take time to visit my relatives' graves, and I keep up my mother's and brother's graves here.

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

I've only purposely visited one famous person's grave on my own, Samuel Plimsoll, and probably wouldn't have done that without friends nearby I wanted to visit.
Note that has approriate tributes:

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That is impressive.

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

I just recalled another I visited intentionally, since I was in the right place- Ernest Shackleton's.