Tag Archive for: America Comes Alive

Happy Birthday America

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Early in the 20th century, my grandfather Mendel left Russia knowing he would never see his parents again. He came to America, to New York, and like many recent immigrants, became a peddler. My great-grandfather invited him home for lunch after Sabbath services and introduced him to his daughter, Rachel Esther. In a nice ironic twist for this blog, my grandmother was born on the 4th of July, a genuine American beauty.

As the story unfolds, Mendel and Rachel were married and moved to Lancaster, South Carolina, then a small quiet town (now an outlying suburb for Charlotte, North Carolina). They opened the town’s mercantile (general store) and began raising their eight sons and daughters, one of which was my mother, the original Evelyn. They were the only Jewish family in the town, but my mother never recounted a single tale of anti-semitism. Her best friend, Lib Ferguson, would take my mother to Tent Revival Meetings – and she loved all the drama and energy she’d find on those evenings. It was an idyllic childhood, with high-spirited siblings and bountiful family dinners. One by one, my grandfather’s brothers immigrated to America, and each would open a mercantile in yet another small Southern town.

I’m in awe of my grandfather’s courage. He embarked on an adventure without a clear roadmap of where he was going or how he would live. Granted, life in Russia was bleak. He would have been conscripted into the Russian army and his hometown was the target of anti-semitic pogroms. So he chose the unknown over the known because America was the land of freedom and opportunity, neither of which he would find in his native land. We need to remind ourselves about that truth on not only this holiday weekend, but also on those days when there are no fireworks and no red, white, and blue bunting draped on the porches of homes across this great land.

Our country is far from perfect, but the foundation of this nation is as close to perfection as humans can get. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That’s what my grandfather sought when he crossed the Atlantic in search of a new homeland. It’s what we still must strive to attain.

Happy Birthday America.

Marian, the Northern half of Evelyn David

Murder Off the Books by Evelyn David
Murder Takes the Cake by Evelyn David

A Missing Corpse?

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When it comes to mysteries, few things are as bone-chilling as the thought of a missing corpse. After all, shouldn’t the dead be left alone? Not necessarily. Grave robbing can—and has—happened.

Michael Jackson’s family is said to have selected Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California for his burial, feeling that it was a more secure location for his body. They needn’t go back too far in history to find reason for concern. Elvis Presley’s remains were the target of an unsuccessful “body snatching” plot, and in 1978 Charlie Chaplin’s body was removed from his grave. His widow refused to pay a ransom, so poor Charlie was later discovered left in a cornfield by his frustrated abductors.

The idea of stealing a body for ransom goes back to the late 1800s. In 1876 a plan to take Lincoln’s body was foiled, but the body of Alexander T. Stewart, one of the wealthiest merchants of the Gilded Age, was successfully removed, and this crime set off a major fear among the well-to-do. Woodlawn Cemetery, the interment site of Jay Gould, established a security force after robber baron Jay Gould was placed in the family mausoleum there because there had been threats that his body would be taken.

Of course, grave robbing used to have a “practical” purpose—digging up bodies was one of the methods necessary to obtain bodies for dissection and medical study. Often the “procurer” made his living by obtaining bodies and/or organs for doctors or medical schools, but sometimes the medical students themselves had to get their own bodies. Documents left by the students indicate that the procurement of bodies was actually quite stressful. One fellow wrote, “No occurrences in the course of my life have given me more trouble and anxiety than the procuring of subjects for dissection.” With his friends at Harvard, this fellow, John Collins Warren Jr., created a secret anatomic society in 1771 called Spunkers, whose purpose was to conduct anatomic dissections.

Body snatching presented a terrible problem for the families of the deceased. They commonly set up watch over the body until burial, and later, relatives would take turns watching over the grave for a few days to be certain it was not dug up afterward.

Today fears of body snatching are primarily limited to those where there is enough ‘fame value” that the body parts would do well on eBay. In the meantime, most people today will be allowed to “rest in peace.”

Kate Kelly

Kate Kelly is a corporate speaker and successful author of more than 25 nonfiction titles. She is a veteran of both local and nationwide talk and news programs and has been quoted in publications such as Time and The Wall Street Journal. She has appeared on World News Tonight, Good Morning America, The View, The CBS Early Show, Fox and Friends, and on CNN, MSNBC and The Fox News Channel. For more interesting bits from American history, check out http://www.americacomesalive.com/blog