Home
combs
Trip to Tyner

9th November 2002

 

On this Saturday morning Cele, Kyle and I left for the road to Tyner, Kentucky in Jackson County, KY. It was a beautiful clear warm and sunny day. The wind was blowing some, but the temperature was around 70 degrees and the trees were at their peak of color. As we drove through Berea and up the Big Hill road toward Tyner, we were overcome with the awesome color display in the mountains of Kentucky. Such a beautiful day for the mission we were setting out for. We were taking stones for the gravesite of our grandmother, Leni Leota Stewart Combs and our Uncle Robert Combs. Neither of whom we had ever seen, but only knew through the words of our mother. Leni Leota was her mother and she had died from T.B. of the lungs when our mother was about seven years of age. Soon to follow was the death of her brother, Robert.

I had been to this cemetery many times over the years. The first time that I remember being there was in the late 1950s. Perhaps I had been there before but I do not remember any time prior to that. Kyle and I, with our daughters and Donna Carolyn, took Mama up there to clean off the graves and she had some markers made at Stith Funeral Home in Danville that she was to place on the graves. They were metal markers that just stuck in the ground. We cleaned off the cemetery, which was overgrown with blackberry briars, tree sprouts and poison ivy and vines of every kind. This was a hard task and took us nearly a full day to accomplish this. Then Mama placed the markers on the graves. They had been on the graves for almost 47 years and all the letters were gone but just two. When we were digging for the foundation for the stones we unearthed some of the letters long lost in the soil. We were coming here to replace these markers with some stones.

I had made the stones we were bringing on the back porch at my home in Danville. They were nothing fancy, but made from decorative yard stones that I purchased at Lowes and fastened together. I had plates engraved with names and dates, and glued them onto the stones. There was a nice salesman in Lowes that gave me some advice as to what to use and how to attach the plates.

When they were finished, I was quite proud of my work and planned out just what to take with me to set the stones for the best possible lasting quality. I bought some foundation stones and some concrete putty substance for adherence. Filled up two buckets with small gravel for foundation, and a coffee can with concrete mix to pour over the gravel. Gathered up gloves, shovel, knife, caulking gun, and a two wheeler, and we started out to place the stones in the cemetery on the hill at Tyner.

Such a beautiful day, and we got right up the hill with no trouble at all. There had been lots of rain in the weeks prior to this day and we were afraid that the road would be wet and muddy, but no it was in good shape. Our only problem was that the man at the entrance to the road was parked right in the road and we had to go around him, but that gave us no problem.

When we viewed the cemetery, we were so pleased that it was clean and well kept. It had been about three or four years since we had been there and we were worried that it was not being kept well. We went into the cemetery and began our work. Kyle started the shovel to prepare for the foundation while I unloaded our stones and buckets from the van. We had everything that we needed and had no problem in setting the stones and finished our work in a bit less than two hours.

I took pictures of our work and was pleased with the way the stones looked when we were finished. It is my hope that they will last, stay nice, and remain until someday they will be replaced again by some descendent again in time. I know that my mother would be pleased with the thought that we had replaced the markers with some stones.

As we were leaving, we stopped at the bottom of the hill where we saw a man feeding a herd of goats. He must have had about twenty goats. He was the person who lived at the entrance to the cemetery. We asked him if he was caring for the cemetery and he answered affirmatively. He told us that D. A. Reynolds and Les Reynolds paid him to care for cemetery. We recognized these names as being children of Walker Reynolds, a relative. Cele gave him $20.00 to show our gratitude for his faithfulness in caring for the graves of our Grandmother and Uncle. He appeared to be a kind and caring person. Although he was being paid for his work, we wanted to have some part in rewarding him for his diligence. This is something mere money cannot pay for.

We intend to go back and make sure that things are holding up well and that the adhesive that I used is going to withstand the thawing and freezing of our Kentucky weather. I feel that it will, but want to be sure that I have done the best that I could do.

My sister, Cele and I recalled the things our Mother had told us about the day her Mother had died, was carried to the hill and buried. For many years, each Fall we had taken Mama and her sister, our Aunt Flora to the mountains of Kentucky. We had always visited this cemetery, the old house that their father had built, and where they lived when they were in Tyner The old one room school where they went to school and their father was their teacher. Then we went on to Owsley County, where they were born, and where they lived with their Aunts after their Mothers death. We visited all their cousins and relatives there, went to the places they remembered where they went to school, where their grandparents and other relatives were buried. Days that my sister and I cherish now as we remember the tales they told us of their youth and the love that they had for the mountains of Kentucky. These memories are invaluable to us and we are grateful for the opportunity we enjoyed in sharing this time together.

God is good and has given us a wonderful heritage.

Marie Case Crain

November 18th 2002

These are the gravestones on my back porch where I put them together.
mcc

marie1.jpg

This is all that was left of the markers that Mama put up there when Kyle and I, together with Linda, Brenda, Teresa and Donna Carolyn went with her and helped her clean off the cemetery and put up these markers. I think it was in the neighborhood of 1958. Do you remember this Donna? mcc

marie2.jpg

Kyle begins to put his back into the work while I am getting things out of the van with a two wheeler. mcc

marie3.jpg

Cele and I pose by our finished work.   mcc

marie4.jpg

Cele brushes away the dirt, stones, grass, and plants back the buttercup bulbs, as we load up our tools and are ready to depart. mcc

marie5.jpg

We fasten back the little gate to the "Homestead" cemetery, and prepare to leave. mcc

marie6.jpg

 We take one more look back at the cemetery where our grandmother has lain for almost 98 years with little to mark her resting place, contemplate if these small stones made by her granddaughter will last until the time when someone else will replace them. Remembering our mother telling us about the day that they carried her mother up the hill to bury her, and her father carrying her to the porch of a neighbor, where he left her to stay out on the porch on a snowing Winter day, where she said she huddled down and cried until he came back down the hill and carried her home. Remembering the tales that she told us of her hard time living with her Aunts in the Owsley County mountains and going to schools there, until her father made a home for them in Berea and came back to get them. How her brother, Robert, had died in Berea, and her father drove a horse and buggy up to Tyner to bury him on the same hilltop beside his mother. A long cold ride over rugged roads on another cold Winter day. Riding over these mountains, it is hard to imagine how a horse and buggy managed the trip. Although it is not more than 40 miles by car, driving a horse over the rugged roads of that time must have been very long and difficult. It renders our hearts now to think of the sad and difficult times our mother and her siblings endured during this tragic year of 1904.
Marie Case Crain

marie7.jpg

go back