Grave Problem

MANNERS & MORALS

It was a sad and sacred moment. The bereaved family and other mourners were gathered one day last week around a gravesite in National Memorial Park cemetery, near Falls Church, Va. across the Potomac from Washington. Suddenly, as the rabbi bowed his head in prayer, a raucous blast of hillbilly music disrupted the burial ceremony. As the casket was lowered into the earth, it was accompanied by another chorus of mooing mountain music. Afterward, when 20 shocked and weeping mourners protested, Robert F. Marlowe, proprietor of National Memorial Park, was sorry but not surprised. The hillbilly music was just another episode in a running battle between Frank Curtin, a Department of Defense mechanic, and the owners of the cemetery.

Mortician's Dream. In 1948, Frank Curtin bought a small farmhouse on a 1 1/2-acre lot near Falls Church, and began to build a $42,500 home there. Two years later, he was dismayed to find that Gravedigger Marlowe had bought 63 acres to the east and south of his land, and was planning to extend National Memorial Park to the Curtin fenceline. Citing an old Virginia law that prohibits cemeteries closer than 750 ft. to residences, Curtin argued the matter in court. The court ruled that the law did not apply to existing cemeteries, and National Park began to creep toward Curtin's dooryard. The cemetery, a mortician's dream, features "music from the trees," bars tombstones (graves are marked by bronze plaques, level with the clipped lawns) and boasts an impressive statuary group, The Fountain of Faith, by famed Scupltor Carl Milles (TIME, Oct. 20, 1952). For a while, Marlowe negotiated with the Egyptian embassy for a Mohammedan extension of his cemetery, but the plan fell through. By last year Marlowe had established a Jewish section of his burying ground, the King David Memorial Garden, hard by the Curtin property, and a group of vaults of reinforced concrete ("the most eternally, perpetually" solid material) stood 189 ft. from Curtin's fence.

Curtin's reaction was drastic. Last month he posted a sign overlooking King David Memorial Garden, which said: "Investigation has disclosed underground streams with considerable flow just below the surface of this entire area. If you insist on being buried [here] please use a coffin of a type that will retard contamination of our well." A fortnight ago, five 25-ft. gallows, equipped with hangman's nooses, appeared on the Curtin property, looming lugubriously over the cemetery. Soon, Curtin promised, he would add realistic dummies.

"Gallows Knoll." When Curtin turned on the music last week, Marlowe acted fast, sued for an injunction. Curtin expressed astonishment. The gibbets, he explained, were just part of the decor: he planned to name his place "Gallows Knoll." And he had meant no offense when he turned on the music. He just liked to hear hillbilly music, and turned the radio up so that he could listen as he worked in his yard. Besides, he was not happy to hear the recorded hymns that waft from the cemetery's public-address system every Sunday. "It boils down to this," he explained. "I've plots in that cemetery, and I'll probably be buried there when I die. But I don't like being in the middle of a cemetery when I'm alive."

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