I see dead people. Once they were flesh and bone, fiber and liquid. Now they rest between the School of Music and McArthur Court, in Pioneer Cemetery.
Established in 1872, the cemetery’s 16 acres are dotted with old headstones and stately trees which none can fail to see, but many prefer to ignore. On this hallowed night, perhaps it is time to take another look at this historic, silent town.
When humans were still living as hunters and gatherers, they became aware of their own mortality. They began to bury their dead with ceremony and respect. As historian Lewis Mumford wrote, cities of the dead preceded cities of the living. Some of the famous monuments, from the Great Pyramids to the Taj Mahal, were built to honor the dead, and to ensure that the living remembered.
Cemeteries have inspired some remarkable poems. “Spoon River Anthology” by Edgar Lee Masters gave voice to the quiet lives of small-town Americans. My personal favorite is Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” one of the most quoted works in literature.
Recent times have witnessed a change in attitudes toward death and the dead. Modern cities saw cities of the dead as obstacles to their progress. Useless bones were taking up valuable real estate! A century ago, San Francisco ordered the removal of thousands of remains south to Colma. No doubt this move caused many 49ers to roll over in their graves.

Eugene has not been immune to promoting development over dead bodies. In fact, University officials tried to condemn Pioneer Cemetery in 1956. In the 1960s, they attempted to build classrooms over the graveyard, with an open-air ground floor to keep the grave sites intact.
The contemporary treatment of cemeteries reflects our disdainful attitude toward death. Rather than accept death and honor those who died, we choose to ignore reminders of our own mortality. From Botox and Viagra, to the Ted Williams cryogenics saga, to the search for the Methuselah gene, we attempt to defy signs of our eventual fate.
Cemeteries also reflect how we lived. I used to visit Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, Calif., where wealthy families like the Crockers and Ghirardellis had erected large obelisks and mausoleums to mark their worldly status. In Colma, Italians, Jews and Japanese were laid to rest in separate grounds.
While neither vast nor famous like the great urban landmarks, Pioneer Cemetery has enduring virtues which reflect the lives of its early settlers. As Gray wrote:
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
Is it unseemly today to have a graveyard amidst the blissful bops of Beall Concert Hall, the graceful glissades of Gerlinger Annex and the monster jams of McArthur Court? Even more incongruous to be among youthful students solving proofs, debating the world or making love. Yet the invisible dead and visible headstones remind us that “the paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
But where glory ends, legacy begins. This insight seized me on Tuesday, as I watched 20,000 people attend a memorial to the late Senator Paul Wellstone on C-SPAN. His two sons spoke not of past victories, but about his integrity, devotion to family and passion for social justice. Wellstone retained the virtues of a decent man while practicing big-time politics. Even in death, his exemplary life continues to inspire the people he served.
More than any obelisk, statute, or mausoleum, our character and service to others is what future generations may remember.
Today we are flesh and bone, fiber and liquid. What will we be a century from now? A fond memory? An example to others? Or just dust?
Happy Halloween.