Strong Family Cemetery, Clark County, Arkansas

Mother Agnes Hart..

An Arkansas Saint...to be

I made a pilgrimage today….Two and a half hours east of my hometown of Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas, to a tiny spot down a narrow, tree lined road in the middle of vast soybean and rice fields …I found the somewhat abandoned Catholic Church that I was looking for …Saint Martha’s and her tiny cemetery around back….the only witnesses of the day were the bees that lived in the church…

My pilgrimage was to plant red roses at the grave of a nun, some say was Sister Agnes Hart but, the monument states Mother Agnes Hart, who was born in Kentucky in 1797 and moved to Arkansas in 1838. She served with the Sisters of Loretto and came to the area with three other nuns to start the first Catholic school in Arkansas. Mother Agnes wrote desperate letters home in hope that help was on its way...She and the children were starving and getting sick...Sadly, help didn’t arrive in time and Mother Agnes Hart died of malaria a little over a year later in 1839, surrounded by the other nuns and the children whom she taught and loved…

Mother Agnes was first buried in a cemetery along the river...then thirty years later, as the river flooded and tried to change its course, Mother Agnes’ friends and students disinterred her body to move it to higher ground...when they finally reached her body they found that it had miraculously been perfectly preserved and looked as if she had just died that very day! Remember, this is thirty years after her death and embalming was never done…Bodies which have not decomposed are a sign of miraculous intervention, according to Roman Catholic Church….

Why would I, a stranger, make a pilgrimage to a grave of a woman who died some one hundred and twenty years before my birth? Because I wanted to pay homage to a soon to be Saint….Yes, a Saint in the Holy Catholic Church…This little know nun... in a grave in a tiny cemetery hidden within the vast grain fields of South West Arkansas... A full blown Saint, as in the likes of St Francis of Assisi, Saint Andrew and Saint Jude.

Yesterday, all of the television stations in the state were abuzz with the news that the Catholic Diocese of Arkansas was petitioning the Vatican to make Mother Agnes Hart a Saint. …I just had to find her; I wanted to plant the roses, rub the stone that her students and friends so lovingly erected for her in 1885…offer a prayer for her sainthood and request an intervention for myself.

Word has it that there is also a member of the church who was healed of cancer after asking for Mother Agnes to intervene. In order for the Vatican to canonize an individual as a saint, two miracles would need to be confirmed. One already has and I hope that the other will soon.

The Graveyard Rabbit: Grab A Badge!

The Graveyard Rabbit: Grab A Badge!

I have always been extremely proud to be a Southerner...for many, many reasons...but, it all seems to come out the most at funerals…At the funeral today of a beloved friend, Carl Johnson..In today’s society it has become a rare commodity for people to take the time out of their day to attend a funeral…much less take the last journey with a beloved friend to their final resting place...

The funeral was lovely, well attended...the songs were the old hymns that we grew up on...the scriptures were thought provoking and comforting and the eulogue was touching with the kind of depth that can only be earned by a rich life well lived…the casket spray was a beautiful fall arraignment with graceful movement. It was cold, dreary, and rainy outside…But, the warmth from the comfort that we gave to each other stayed with us probably until each of us got home.
But, It was when I got into my car at the funeral home that the true feeling of the ritual took hold...fewer friends went to the cemetery than I thought should have..I have always wondered why one would not want to see a friend home safely...I suppose we don’t all see it that way...but I do...….when we drop a living friend off at their homes we always wait until they are safely inside until we pull off..We tell them “I’ll wait until you are inside until I pull off”...Somehow we feel that we need to say it and they need to hear it so that they will know that we really care about them...
This should be no difference when a death has occurred…we are indeed “going home” for the last time…

After we left the funeral home and pulled into traffic...as usual, here in the South... the oncoming cars started pulling over as a show of respect…I was glad that I was alone in my car so that I could absorb the time honored show of respect for a stranger “going home” I remembered when then President Bill Clinton’s beloved mother, Virginia Clinton Kelley, died while The President was still in his first term in office...the funeral planning took a week, the funeral was held in our Convention Auditorium here in Hot Springs National Park Arkansas..

After the service, the two Presidential limousines followed the hearse... and the cortege that followed stretched for miles and miles and miles... I was in my car a few cars behind the front of the cortege...It was when we pulled onto Interstate 30 for the hour and forty five minutes from Hot Springs, Arkansas to the small hometown of Hope, Arkansas for the burial. It was then that I noticed that almost EVERYONE on the north bound side began to pull over as the hearse passed...this went on for one and a half hours…The most touching show of respect that I have ever seen was when I saw 18 wheelers pull over from their time crunched schedules to show their respect ….they not only pulled over.. They got out of their trucks and put their hats over their hearts... All for a perfect stranger…

Today, I saw the same respect shown for my friend, Carl Johnson, the owner of a local dry cleaners.