In memory of…
Marcella Buck. In my walks around the city, I notice the stones and plaques at the base of trees and bushes. Because I haven’t lived in this city for very long, I don’t know the history of most of them, nor do I know the people the markers are honoring. On the other hand, I find them fascinating, and wonder about the person who placed the marker as well as the person or group the marker is honoring.
Okay, I understand when it is honoring a group, for example, the Jaycees. And I even suspect that many of the individuals are related to the person, who had the marble block placed. That makes perfect sense to me.
My new obsession with a marker, in particular, the marker that bears the name Marcella Buck, has to do with the fact that the huge evergreen that it was planted underneath has been cut down. The stump, which is now nearly flat to the ground, is all that remains of this pine. The marker is still there, but looks lonely and out of place.
Since this has happened, and every time I walk by her marker, I wonder:
Have the people, who placed the marker, been consulted or know?
Do they care?
Will there be another tree or bush planted to replace this one?*
Who was Marcella? A daughter? A mother? A wife? All of them?
In other words, what’s the story behind the marble plaque?
Or has she been forgotten by all who knew her?
Perhaps the answers don’t matter, but still I wonder. She obviously meant something to someone, was loved and cared about deeply. Alas, I will probably never know.
in memory of…
silk flowers change
with the season
*************************************************************************
I wrote the first section several years ago, and since then, there was a Japanese maple planted to replace the pine, but just recently someone has been placing silk flowers at the base of the stone. At Christmas, red silk poinsettias were added, and just this week, deep pink silk peonies replaced the seasonal poinsettias. I still know little about Marcella except that she has not been forgotten, that she is still loved and missed.
nbsmithblog...random digressions and musings 
Reblogged this on Jane Wilson.
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Thanks Jane for sharing this blog.
By the way, I have a friend, John P. Jones, who recently moved back to Huron, Ohio, where the plaque can be found. He grew up here, and knew Marcella Buck well. Just lived down the street from her and her husband Ed. They owned the Ed-Mar Diner, which was located on Main Street near where the location of the plaque. He admitted he wasn’t aware of the memorial stone until now, And that, as Paul Harvey said, “…the rest of the story.” ~nan
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Not sure if this additional info helps…But since the husbands name is also Ed…
http://coplien.com/individual.php?pid=I19949&ged=coplien.ged
I tried looking up the diner…but maybe it has a different name now?
I’ve seen plaques like that in town here and also at some plantings by our new Library.
It’s good to be remembered and I’m glad the tree was replaced. Most trees like people don’t last for very long. So I am sure with disease or even normal growth some of the trees would have to be replaced.
Nice haiku…you could write it up in calligraphy and leave it by the flowers?…
(I’m a tad slow these days with a pulled muscle. But I’ll get around to things eventually – thanks for stopping by…) ~ Jules
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JP,
The diner is no longer there, closed long ago, but the location of the plaque is close to where the diner used to be (before the city’s downtown went through urban renewal, changing the streets and downtownl back in the early 1960s). Since John Jones lived here then (and his parents’ restaurant The Knotty Pines was across the street from the Ed-Mar), I trust his recollection even if he was just a kid.
Originally, I paired this post with my poem, “Golden Fans,” a poem about ginkgo trees and the memories, but decided to change it up with this haiku. In many ways, it is a better fit, but attempted a haibun with the haiku. Not sure it worked very well. That’s a great idea to put a copy of the haiku with the flowers if I can do an adequate job of calligraphy, but even a fancy font copy might do; thanks for the suggestion and thanks for reading my stuff. Thanks, too, for the link. As the name on the plaque is Marcella A. Buck, I suspect it isn’t the same person, but I am not going to dismiss it; I’ll see John and ask if it could be her. ~nan
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I am always amazed when looking people up…how many of ‘us’ have the same name. There was another M.Buck but she was from MN. I just put in all the info I could, name, city, state, etc and that’s one of the things that popped up. One would think there would be some kind of registry of those memorials. If she were local as well as the diner there might be photos in the library of microfiche news articles? Not everyone has a photo with obits.
(Oh – my pleasure to read. I haven’t been up to much, and am way behind…hard to sit. I did the alt-ice-heat and soak and different pain med last night. But I’m still a tad stiff this morning. I can only hope I am on the mend. It’s hard to get my shoes on and tie my laces!)
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Tonight (September 25, 2017) I found out who Marcella Buck is in relation to a woman in Huron. It turned out I know this person and have become friends with her over the past couple years. Through a conversation we had after a poetry event, I found out that Marcella was her mother, and that the plaque was placed on the spot where the front door of the diner. The evergreen was planted there so that the family could go there at Christmas and sing carols around it. They still do although it is now a Norway maple (not a Japanese maple as I indicated in my blog), and doesn’t quite feel the same as the pine. It is a way of honoring the memory of their mother, grandmother, etc. She continues to honor her mother by placing silk flowers there as well. The latest arrangement, which replaced the peonies, was changed to deep red roses and burnt orange chrysanthemums for her birthday in September.
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