by David Chapman
Staff Writer
Margaret Smith knows a thing or two about stories.
The longtime library official spent close to 40 years in the City’s library system and is the only employee to ever work at all three of the city’s main libraries before she retired in 2008.
While that’s a historical nugget itself, it’s the many stories and factoids Smith helps tell through the Pilot Port of Jacksonville’s unique and ongoing fundraising event that has crowds walking amongst the dead.
The Meninak Club of Jacksonville heard from Smith on the “famous, infamous and interesting” people buried in some Jacksonville cemeteries and invited the group to experience it themselves as part of the “Tales of Our City” walking cemetery tour. The tour — a fundraising project that assists the Pilot Club in raising funds for brain-related disorders — began with the Old Jacksonville City Cemetery but is now held at the 170-acre Evergreen Cemetery and uses costumed storytellers to portray stories of some of Jacksonville’s interesting individuals.
“We wanted a big event,” Smith told the group of more than 75 Meninak members, “and ‘Tales of Our City’ was born.”
Evergreen Cemetery provides a spacious background, she said, in both land mass and the “rich patchwork of people” who are buried there and provide the basis for the stories. Both entertaining and education, Smith said the tour provides information on cemetery residents like architect Henry Klutho, former Mayor John T. Alsop and Cora Crane, the common-law wife of author Stephen Crane.
It’s not just the famous people who have a spot on the tour, though. Smith also told several brief tales on some of the interesting lives and deaths of the tour’s inhabitants, including several police and fire officials, a parachuter who died landing in the cemetery and the daughter of a preacher who perished in an automobile accident around the turn of the 20th century and now has a large angelic statue on her site.
“There are just so many stories,” said Smith. “There is so much history on hand.”
The walking tours usually consist of around 10 people each, she said, with around 15 guides deployed during the event. The next set of tours will be April 24-25, 2010.
The historical nature of Smith’s presentation fell in line with some of what Meninak is doing this year, said President Bunky Johnson, as the organization is celebrating its own history this year by turning 90.
“It gives you some perspective,” said Johnson of Smith’s presentation. “Remembering your history and the history of this city is always important.”
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