Gravely Serious Guide Fills Her Tours Of ‘Outdoor Museums’ With History, Anecdotes

Cemeteries are Carolyn Albright’s favorite haunts.

She’s memorized the names of the dead, chiseled into headstones and mausoleums.

On this autumn afternoon, she’s leaning on a headstone nearly as tall as she is, patiently scraping away moss with a set of dental instruments she carries in her car.

Despite the ghouls, goblins and unearthly entities cemeteries conjure up on Halloween, the 53-year-old Spokane native says there’s nothing ghostly or ghastly about it.

Her favorite saying: “Our past is under grass.”

Albright repeats those words as she enthusiastically guides a group through Greenwood Memorial Terrace in west Spokane.

“I’d like people to understand that cemeteries are not places to be afraid of,” she says.

“They are outdoor museums, places to rest and reflect. I spend an inordinate amount of time at cemeteries and rarely see people.

“It’s too bad, because you can find the history of a community in its cemetery.”

Greenwood cemetery opened in 1888 and is the final resting place for many Spokane pioneers. Fairmount, opened the same year in northwest Spokane, is another one of Albright’s favorites.

She’s visited Greenwood dozens of times before, but Albright still bounces like a debutante at the social gathering of the century.

“Look, there’s the Ridpaths. And the Campbells. You know about the Campbell House. Oh, Victor Dessert (another pioneer mining and hotel man) is in there,” she gushes, pointing to a mausoleum …

“And look, here’s Jimmie Durkin, ‘the minister said he was a man of his word,’ she reads from his headstone.

He closed his saloon once and invited Carrie Nation - the temperance crusader - to come and speak there, she tells the group.

Albright’s tour includes more than the resting places of the rich and famous. Her first stop is potter’s field, a back corner of Greenwood Cemetery. The neglect, overgrown weeds and toppled headstones contrast with the neatly mowed and tended graves in the section closer to the road. Here rest the poor, friendless and criminals.

The headstones - if there are any - are roughly poured cement slabs. One looks as if a child with a stick wrote the inscription. Some are sawed pieces of wood, with the name and date hastily painted.

A 1918 flu epidemic that swept through Spokane is painfully evident in the number of children’s graves from that year.

Albright was a tot herself when she wandered away from her family while visiting a cemetery, she explains to the tour group. The curious child crawled inside a hinged metal casket sleeve and was trapped. She finally managed to squeeze out and run to her parents, who were searching wildly for her.

Instead of terrifying the little girl, it fueled her fascination with the rituals of death.

In her early 20s, as a new autopsy assistant, she walked in on the remains of a “post-post-mortem.” The trays of organs and limbs left her reeling.

“I decided right then if I’m going to do this, I’d better develop a good philosophy of life and death,” she says.

Later she traded the autopsy table for graduate studies in the history and philosophy of science and medicine.

Today she works as technical book specialist at Clarke and Stone Book Co. on North Division.

Cemeteries, their art and architecture, continue to capture her imagination.

On the tour, she pauses at a tall stone marker barely visible through the cluster of bushes.

“Look, here’s Willis Ritchie; he designed the courthouse, you know.”

Among those taking in the scene is Michael Leuthold of Spokane, who overheard Albright talking about the tour at a cafe and couldn’t resist learning more.

“There’s so much more to this than I thought,” he says. “I am definitely going to come back again and take a slower look, probably section by section.”

“Oh, there’s Peter Jacoy! And Bernard and Zofia Schade from the brewery!” someone calls out.

Like all good tour guides, Albright includes a stop at the gift shop along the way. In this case, that means pulling souvenirs from the trunk of her car.

For those enamored with gravestone art, she offers T-shirts, notecards and calendars emblazoned with headstone rubbings.

“Order any time, they make great gifts,” she says.

With her expertise and familiarity with headstones, what epitaph will she choose as her own memorial? Albright grins.

“I’m a firm believer in cremation,” she says.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: BRUSH WITH DEATH Carolyn Albright leads cemetery tours periodically. The cost is $5 per person, with proceeds benefiting the Spokane historic preservation office. For information, call Kathy Elston at 625-6983