I Visited a Cemetery & Saw an Elephant

While at the Expo last month I had some business "in town" to attend to. On the way back I stopped at a cemetery.

It was loaded with many Civil War graves.Some elaborate & well maintained ...

Others, not so much ...

But what made me go there in the first place was this ...

It is a memorial for a man named William F. Duggan who was born in the town. He ran away from home as a boy & joined the circus where he fed & watered elephants. It was his life long dream to be a circus owner. He finally got the chance a few years later. He bought an animal exhibit & was in the processs of turning it into a 3 ring circus when he died of a heart attack while wintering in Florida.

His son had this monument made to go on his grave. It is a replica of his favorite baby elephant - Nancy. Legend has it (according to a granddaughter) that the elephant followed him to the hospital the day he died. The detail is exquisite.

You can see it from the road. The cemetery is behind a church that sits almost directly across from a funeral home where I have attended many viewings but never looked across the street. Who knew?

I can't tell you how eerie it was to be in that cemetery all alone, especially standing right in front of that elephant. I kept expecting it to made that elephant sound. I didn't stay long ....