Tombstones Tell Stories Of The Dead

The story was originally broadcast on May 20, 2007.

We long ago forgot about John Matthews, the soda fountain king, but we can be reminded of him in Green-wood cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y., by staring for all eternity at his achievements in the carbonated drink world — carved in marble.

But Green-wood didn't get to be a national historic landmark because of this sort of thing. Rather, it's because of the who's who of famous people buried here. Among them is the tomb of amateur Egyptologist Albert Parsons.

"We start off with the Old Testament on the far left there, Moses and his mother and then Christian imagery here — you see the lamb which is symbol of the innocence of a child, and then you see the Egyptian god responsible for safeguarding tombs and mausoleums," Green-Wood historian Jeffrey Richman told Sunday Morning correspondent Martha Teichner as he showed off Parsons' very own Sphinx tombstone.

Richman says the cemetery reflects what was going on in the world at the time. In fact cemeteries are like a social history of the United States. Dutch Gravestones from the 18th century were plain and severe, which indicate the harshness of life in colonial America.

"This is about a hostile nature, this is about death constantly stalking the person, the living," Richman said.

A century later, the Victorians were exuberant, sentimental and loved symbolism.

"One of the symbols of a young man who did not attain his full maturity is a cut-off column," Richman said.

By then, Americans romanticized nature and their place in it. They treated cemeteries like public parks and would actually picnic in them. In the 1850s, 500,000 people a year visited Green-Wood.

Admiring the architecture was part of the attraction. If they were around today, those old Victorians would no doubt approve of the creeping return of individualism to tombstone design. Lasers allow photographic likenesses to be etched in granite.

Technology has brought a whole new dimension to remembering a life lost.

"I wanted it to be everything about her — everything," said Jackie Sund, whose daughter Cassie, died in a car accident after her 18th birthday. "I wanted you to be able to look at it, and you know, how loved she was, and what — the kind of person she was."

Cassie is buried in Lake City, Fla. Sund had pictures of her daughter laser-etched on the gravestone, which is exactly Cassie's height, 4 "11'. But that's not all: For $2,000, she had a waterproof, solar-powered video player, called a Vidstone, installed.

"People that don't even know Cassie, they can open it up, and kinda walk away knowing a little bit about her," Sund said.

For Richman the simple slate stone in Green-wood cemetery that he designed for his wife and which will one day be his, too, is an intensely personal statement.

"We have an angel here. My wife would wear an angel pin, and so that's a tribute to her," he said. "One of the Victorian symbols that you see through the cemetery is the globe, which is a symbol for eternity. It has no beginning and no end, and so I wanted to incorporate that here."

Richman's stone was made by Karin Sprague, one of the few remaining hand-carvers of tombstones. Her Rhode Island workshop is filled with its own kind of music.

"My work is really listening and who was this person we're gonna remember and what did they love, and what they were thy passionate about," she said. "How did they spend this short time on earth?"

A woman remembered for her needlepoint, a man who loved nature — Sprague and her assistants try to commit to stone the essence of a person.

"Our soul is in this," Sprague said. "Our breath is in this. There are no two letters the same because they're drawn by hand. That's not computer generated. This is real; I mean I think people are hungry for real."