Monday, December 17, 2007

www.whiteville.com

By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff Writer

Once in a while, a reporter finds a story that can’t be written – not because of scandals or blackmail or bribes, but because there’s just too little to write about.

The story of Mrs. S.J. King is one that haunts me that way.

Mrs. S.J. King and her baby died April 9, 1935. She was 36. She was apparently from Columbus County, since that’s where a year’s worth of digging in old records finally showed me a little more of her life, but not much.

Mrs. King’s tombstone is half-absorbed by a tree in the Clarkton Cemetery; I found her headstone whilst working on another, unrelated story there years ago.

I’ve been around enough burial grounds to understand that markers disappear and disintegrate, and sometimes graves disappear entirely. I’ve helped on a couple of findings where we used long steel poles to find forgotten or lost graves. When people die out or forget or (sometimes) heal and move on, graves and the people in them tend to be forgotten,

Graves and gravestones, one old sage said, are for the living. The dead don’t really care anymore. The remains in those graves aren’t important to the deceased, because when their souls left their bodies, it was a little too late to make better choices about where to spend eternity.

I don’t know what happened to Mrs. King, but I have always been curious. I go to visit her grave each year around this time, not out of some odd fascination, but because I’ve never seen evidence of anyone else doing anything beyond trimming the grass and occasionally blowing the leaves from her plot. There are other forgotten folks there, too. I learned years ago how to spot a sunken in oval in overgrown grass, and I’ve helped on searches for abandoned graves, driving a steel pole into the ground until we found some unfortunate’s final resting place.

It bothered several of us, that driving of a pole into someone’s earthly remains; yet we were working to document and preserve the cemetery, and we had permission to sound the graves. Logically I shouldn’t have been worried about exploring a 150-year-old grave, but I was uncomfortable. As I noted above, the dead don’t care – and that’s why we should.

I’d like to know more about Mrs. King; based on what I read in old newspapers from the time, she could have died from any number of ailments that afflicted pregnant women. It could have been an accident. I don’t know why she was buried in Bladen County but recorded in Columbus, although I’m sure there are plenty of folks whose homes and hearts don’t necessarily match up with what a mapmaker thinks should be the case.

I sincerely hope this column doesn’t raise up unhappy memories for anyone; after nearly 72 years, I know it’ll be tough to find anyone who remembers Mrs. S.J. King and her (apparently) unborn, unnamed child.

I never found if she had any children prior to the one who died with her; I never found out anything else about her husband, or her parents. I don’t know when Mr. and Mrs. King were married, or where. I don’t know if she was a housewife or a working mother or some of both. Good or bad, Christian or pagan, shrew or loving helpmate, I don’t know.

If I don’t find out anything else about her, that’s okay. I’ll still go to visit her now and again, even though I’m reasonably sure she doesn’t know or care that a perfect stranger comes to visit her grave every year.

Because even if the dead don’t care, the living should. When we forget the stories and histories of those who preceded us, we not only dishonor their memory, but we set ourselves up to make the same mistakes all over again.
If you happen to remember Mrs. S.J. King, and don’t mind doing so, please drop me a note or give me a call.

You see, I don’t like stories that can’t be completed, and this one isn’t complete. Even if hers was the most ordinary, everyday existence available in the 1930’s, I’d still like to know the story of Mrs. S.J. King, age 36 years, who died April 9, 1935.

For the time being, I’ll just stop at her grave for a few minutes one day soon, and think of a lady I never knew.

Weaver is a staff writer at The News Reporter. Contact him via e-mail at jeffweaver@newsreporter.biz, or by telephone at 642-4104, ext. 227.
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