Ken Herman: Stories behind the tombstones, told by living.
Ken Herman says stories behind tombstones are touching, funny.
AUSTIN — Grieve not at every grave in the Texas State Cemetery. Some are vacant.
The names you see on some of the tombstones are of folks still among us.
Cemetery Superintendent Harry Bradley says about 10 percent of the monuments are erected pre-need by folks not freaked out by seeing their own tombstone. Some people, he said, do it to save their families the hassle. “And sometimes money comes into play,” Bradley said.
The stories behind the tombstones of the living include some that are touching, some that are confusing and some that are just humorous. Today we’ll deal with one of each, starting with the impressive monument that says “Mr. Speaker” and bears the seal of the Office of the Speaker.
“I wanted to make sure I enjoyed it while I was on the upside,” said Gib Lewis, who served in the Texas House from 1971 to 1993, including five terms as Mr. Speaker.
Lewis, 80, said he took the advice of somebody who told him “what you pick out will be different from what your kids do because your kids will spend very little money on your monument. You might get a $150 monument.”
Mike Levy’s stylish headstone is one section over from Lewis’ monument. The former Texas Monthly publisher remains very much alive and very much Levy. His headstone is a meaningful tribute to a friend buried elsewhere in the State Cemetery.
Levy, 70, initially rejected a plot near a deceased lawmaker who had earned his way onto Texas Monthly’s 10 worst legislators list. “I don’t want to be next to this guy for eternity listening to him complain about being on Texas Monthly’s 10 worst list,” Levy said.
So he picked a plot not far from the cemetery’s western boundary. He will be buried near former State Rep. Don Lee, D-Harlingen, who died in 2012. Best I can tell, Lee never made the 10 worst list.
Levy’s tombstone, erected in 2013, stands as a touching monument more for the man who designed it than the man who one day will be buried at it. Levy told me the story as he stood at his future grave.
He and Austin artist Damian Priour, the Texas state artist in 2008, were friends and Priour agreed to design Levy’s headstone. Shortly before his 2011 death, Priour called friends, including Levy, to tell them his cancer was in its final stages.
“I said ‘You’ve got to outlive me so you can do my tombstone,’” Levy said.
He did not, but J.J. Priour (the artist’s son) and David Hesser (the artist’s longtime assistant) completed the work, crafting it on a design Levy and the elder Priour had been working on.
Levy remains moved by the efforts of his late friend.
“It is as much an honor to him as a friend, and a great talented friend, that I did it,” Levy said of erecting the stone pre-death, something that doesn’t creep him out.
Levy is so OK with seeing his own tombstone that, unprompted, he laid down several feet above where he one day will rest in peace (perhaps against the wishes of legislators relegated to Texas Monthly’s 10 worst list). Comfy? “Uh yeah,” Levy said, rising from his gravesite, “especially when you consider that Jews get buried in a pine box with no nails and I have a feeling that’s going to be much firmer than this.”
Levy’s plot is a doublewide, which means there’s a place reserved for a “future spouse Levy,” something he said there never will be. Levy’s been divorced since 1993.
“What are you going to do with that extra space?” he asked Bradley. “I told my kids they can use it as a sandwich concession. But then I thought you wouldn’t like that.”
“That probably wouldn’t work,” Bradley confirmed. Levy’s second plot will revert to the cemetery if not used. That means Levy, unless he marries again, doesn’t know who’ll be next to him.
“You get along with everybody, don’t you?” I asked him.
“Not exactly,” he said. “I told you if I show up floating in Lady Bird Lake someday, the line to the police station the next day will be a very long line of people claiming credit.”
Levy says he is deeply honored by being voted into the cemetery by the committee that can allow State Cemetery burial for somebody who made a “significant contribution to Texas history and culture.”
Austin attorney Sarah Weddington qualified as a Texas House member from 1973-1977. And, as her cemetery monument notes among her achievements, Weddington was the “Winning Attorney, Roe v. Wade, U.S. Supreme Court, 1973.”
The sides of her striking, glossy monument pinch in at the middle.
“One night,” she explained, “I had the inspiration of having the sides of the granite shaped in a female form.”
The monument was installed this year. There’s a tale behind it, a tale Bradley says isn’t accurate.
Weddington, 71, said she selected her plot in 1977, opting for one near Stephen F. Austin and Big Foot Wallace, the latter, according to Weddington, being “a bachelor who had been a Texas Ranger and is said to have been an interesting person and a wonderful teller of tales.”
“I laughed that I thought he would be marvelous for late-night conversations. I’m also not far from Barbara Jordan’s plot,” she said.
All was fine until Weddington checked out her plot last year.
“It never occurred to me that I needed to actively protect my plot,” she told me, “until one day several months ago when I went out to the State Cemetery and discovered that ‘my’ plot was occupied.”
The person Weddington claims was buried in her original plot is Robert Johnson, who died in 1995 after a 30-year career as a legislator, state agency executive, House and Senate parliamentarian and lobbyist.
“I will be in what was his designated plot until he was buried in my plot,” Weddington told me.
Bradley insists none of this is accurate.
“She is mistaken,” he said. “She has the plot she selected and so does Bob Johnson. There was no mistake.”
I’m staying out of this one. Everyone involved seems happy now, though Johnson was unavailable for comment.