Bob Raynor, a reporter/columnist for the Times Dispatch who is retiring later this month, has written a very personal piece on Hollywood Cemetery. Here is an excerpt:
Reporting is usually best when it’s about small things: verifiable, human, close to home. Humility is essential. But it’s important not to forgo the ordinary miracles hiding all around us. Just be sure to treat them with the respect they deserve.
This year already: a rust-colored moon dims the heavens, if only for a moment, and reveals the shadowless light, suns reduced to sparkling pinpoints. How can we not wonder? And a rushing river, impatient for the sea, foams furiously as it crosses old stones and small dams, fueled by melting mountain snows. Does it sense the brackish muddle that awaits below the fall line? The necessary drift? It seems so. An ancient tributary, after all, wise to the ways.
Some stories are too precious to be written frequently. They require a gentle touch, like a fresh seedling, thirsty and fragile.
They must be approached obliquely, sheltered from lethal doses of certainty. But once told, unleash the soul.
***
They rest among rolling green pastures along the high banks of the James, those good souls who never escape childhood yet testify to the power of grace. The waters below are never still, crashing around boulders and pylons in an endless race to the ocean, and the eternal silence is endlessly broken. A blessing. So this is Richmond’s beating heart. This is Hollywood. No place for the fearful, with its ferocious calm and soft, seeded mounds.
Stone crosses and angels — at once static and moving — stand guard even though they are no longer needed, except as reminders to the living.
You may look away. But there is no escape.
***
