Intriguing Memorials

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Getting Beyond The Grave Marker

Intriguing memorials do more than just mark the spot of a person’s grave or give evidence that a person lived. No, the best memorials are the ones that somehow capture the spirit of a person’s entire life and carry it through the ages. Here is a look at some of the more intriguing memorials across our planet:

In Australia, a small city in the island state of Tasmania has created a memorial to Norman Sykes, one of its unique individuals. Although Sykes was a fighter pilot in World War I and an accomplished musician, scholar and engineer, those parts of his life are minimized in the intriguing memorial to him. Instead, the memorial focuses on his real life’s work, living in harmony with nature. Following, perhaps, the lead of America’s famous recluse David Henry Thoreau, Sykes  shunned the city life, as well as all things mechanical, and lived the long, last portion of his life in a self-supporting, make-shift shack well outside of his city. There he got around via bicycle, lived on food thrown out by restaurants and stores, and even used his bicycle to generate electricity for his nightly reading light. Before he died, he left a detailed request that his property outside of town be maintained as a sanctuary for animals and plants. The human body is the most efficient machine invented, he said in the request. Use it to attain health happiness and sanity. Upon finding the request, the townspeople quickly decided to honor it. The area is preserved as parkland and, coming very soon, a wooden statue of Sykes will be the key feature of the park.

The Nunhead Cemetery in London is the city’s 2nd largest Victorian cemetery and, as such, is filled with intriguing memorials. The cemetery is not exactly well known among modern-day Londoners, and it accepted its last grave in 1998. But, because the land is home to hundreds of the city’s most intriguing personalities, it has hardly been abandoned. The cemetery is maintained by a hearty group of volunteers who spend their spare-time documenting each grave, and keeping all of the intriguing markers in top shape. These markers are more than just your typical headstones. In most cases, the graves are elaborately decorated with sculptures, statues and monuments designed to capture a person’s personality. So, while the Nunhead Cemetery is not exactly the most visited spot in London today, it is definitely an incredibly unique memorial. Find an interesting article about Art in Ashes right here.

And, for the most widespread intriguing memorial in the world we note that many memorials particularly those devoted to victims of wars and other tragic events feature the words Lest We Forget. That phrase is common throughout America today on paintings and sculptures that pay tribute to victims of everything from the Holocaust to the terrorist attacks of 2001. The words first came of widespread modern use just after World War I. That war was fought on the premise that it was to be The War to End All Wars, and yet, just a few months after the fighting had ended, World War II already seemed inevitable. In hopes of avoiding more conflicts, builders of World War I memorials across the world began invoking Lest We Forget, in an attempt to remind future generations that war is an horrific thing. The most intriguing part of this type of memorial, then, is that, today it is often used particularly in reference to the 2001 attacks to inspire a spirit of patriotic vengeance rather than statesman-like peace.