By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--May 27, 2024

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For many years it has been an interest of mine to visit cemeteries. There was a tradition of visiting cemeteries on my dad’s side of the family, particularly. My grandfather’s father was a stone carver who inscribed several family stones. I was shown these markers before I was a teen. It was very clear to me that they were part of our family’s history but more importantly, part of the country’s history. They are part of us, and they remind us of those who came before.

After my grandmother passed away I made many visits to the Mt. Summit cemetery where she rested. I began to look around there, discovering a marker for Flossie Flannery, a WAC who lost her life in a plane crash off the coast of Africa in 1945. The rest of her story appeared in my bookThe War Comes To Plum Street, along with many others that began with visits to cemeteries.

Not long afterward, when I learned to drive, I began to stop at cemeteries here and there to explore and investigate. Using James E. Smith’s stone carving legacy, I later began to write academic papers on cemeteries and funerary art for American culture journals. That meant more visits to more cemeteries. I visited the American military cemetery at Hamm, Luxembourg, where Patton is buried with many of his troops. I went to the Allied D-Day cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, in Normandy, and to many markers in the little villages scattered across France and England. I made several trips to Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, New York. That’s where you’ll find Civil War notables John A. Griswold and George Thomas. Every........

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