As New Orleans is my home away from home, particularly its cemeteries, I was honored to be invited by talk show host, Jeff Crouere of Ringside Politics on WSGO 990AM to discuss a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of New Orleans respective of cemetery accessibility and what the motivations of closing, limiting them may actually be along with other cemetery challenges. I join a distinguished company here with Mindy Shea Frazier of Visit Savannah and Jane Batty, Director of Louisiana Good Life.
Tag Archives: education
Little Gracie 140th Birthday Tour & Luncheon with Shannon Scott
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It’s that time of year again with one of Shannon Scott’s most popular tours!
Little Gracie turns 140!
Shannon Scott proudly presents the 2nd Annual Little Gracie Birthday Tour & Luncheon to celebrate Little Gracie Watson turning 140 and to celebrate the life, times and legacy of her sculptor John Walz with tour and luncheon! TICKETS ARE LIMITED and you may buy them here! https://shannonscotttours.com/public-tours/bonaventure-cemetery/
Commemorative merchandise will be available for 2 weeks only at Buzzard and Bone
going on sale Sunday June 12th!
It was nearly 140 years ago that a grieving father, hotel owner, Wales Watson, walked into the sculptural studio of famed Gettysburg Battlefield sculptor, John Walz, in Savannah, Georgia, and silently presented him with a photograph of Gracie “Little Gracie” Watson. He then turned around and left Walz studio — wordless. This was the level of grief he and Gracie’s mother, Frances, were experiencing. John Walz understood the mission and was no stranger to the parent’s request of him. Before the hours of penicillin and improved sewage in American cities, such meetings and monuments, would pay the overhead of every stone cutter in the country. Walz would soon set to task, acquiring a block of Georgia marble, and as he noted in his papers, carved her “from front to back” over the next 1.5 years before unveiling her to her parents who painfully commented to him, “John — its an EXACT likeness.” Over the decades to follow, and years after her parents moved up North ultimately buried in Albany, NY, the creation of Little Gracie would come to define Savannah and affirm for people, the importance of The Eternal Child in everyone, the preservation of that curious spirit and the innocence in everyone that keeps the world wholesome and good. Eventually Savannahians began to register Little Gracie as the guardian angel of Savannah, Bonaventure and themselves.
Gracie’s Childhood Home, The Pulaski House Hotel
Before John Walz died in 1922 at 78 of silicosis which seems somehow a noble disease considering his life’s work, he’d added hundreds if not thousands of monuments to the cemeteries of the world, some of them as far away as Bulgaria. According to The Bonaventure Historical Society, 77 of those monuments can be officially found in Bonaventure Cemetery. There is no question, that more than any other, Walz defined the esthetic spirit of Bonaventure that would come to make the place known as an outdoor art musem and brought travelers from all of the world long before Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil.
