By Brenda Cummings

Gravestones appear on front lawns in October, and they are gone by the first week in November. They and the accompanying Halloween decorations are generally, well, tacky. By contrast, real cemeteries are infinitely interesting, often informative and enlightening. They are only scary in the daytime with wind, rain, thunder and lightning.

So, pick a nice, sunny day to browse a cemetery. It is not a ghoulish activity. Lots of people stroll through cemeteries where they have no connections with anyone who's buried there. They (we) read names and dates and try to reconstruct lives and relations. Several infant deaths to one set of parents tell a sad story, as do multiple deaths in a family during a flu epidemic.

With a list of notable Walker County sites in hand, I visited Oak Hill Cemetery in Jasper. There I searched for a sculpture by Giuseppe Moretti, the Italian sculptor who spent much of his life in America, and some of it in Alabama. He is credited with the first sculpture made of Alabama marble, his Head of Christ. We are most familiar with his Vulcan, the largest cast-iron statue in the world which sits atop our Red Mountain. In the Jasper cemetery stands one of the 14 cemetery memorials created by Moretti.

It was easy to find. A hundred yards or so from the entrance, just to the left of the narrow paved road, are several conspicuous tombs and headstones. They represent generations of the illustrious Bankhead family. I walked through slowly, reading engravings on the heavy, rectangular monuments. And then I arrived at a different one.

It seems almost to stand alone, though it is surrounded by family. It is twice as tall as a person, and tapered at the top. It exudes a serenity that deadens any surrounding sounds or activity. It absorbs a visitor. On the back side is engraved a verse. On the front in bas-relief a winged figure embraces a smaller, younger man, as if in welcome. The sturdy supporting structure beneath the sculpture indicates the purpose of the memorial.

Interred here is William Haynes Bankhead Perry, only son of Col. William Haynes Perry and his wife, Louise Bankhead, born in Greenville, S.C., March 16, 1897, and died in Jasper, Nov. 3, 1915.

Here's the verse on the back: "Good night - Brave Boy! If on some gleaming shore thou hast waked To great soul princes gone before, They've found thee fit companion; for knightlier spirit ne'er crossed the Great Divide."

Moretti had a studio in Talladega for a time, and he purchased marble quarries in Sylacauga. You probably won't find a Moretti carving in another cemetery, but you will find yourself outdoors and interested in other lives.

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