northvale

small world

DeFuniak Springs

The first frost came late this year.
I walk the dog in the still morning air.
The leaves by the thousands silently detach
And drift down gliding not tumbling.

I have the white-haired image of my good friend
Not seen in forty years. I see the same posture
From his youth and know he has remained true.
My heart warms to hear the same chuckle in his voice.

Such happiness to find what was thought lost forever.
Such sadness for the life long separation
Each wrestling our individual demons.
Before and after connecting our two lives

Like two books that did not inform each other
Placed together now between the same bookends.

Litchfied East Cemetery Plot

Walter David Munson was 22 years old at the end of the Civil War and a Captain in the Union Army. Subsequently he founded the Munson Steam Ship Line operating passenger service to Bermuda and to the Caribbean out of New York City at the age of 33. He married Emily Wood and they had 5 children: Della Canfield, Carlos Walter, Frank C, Beulah Beach and Mabel. Walter David, Emily Wood, Frank C and his wife Cora Mallory, Mabel Emily and her husband William Hamilton Wood and daughter Beulah Beech Wood Mitchell and Beulah Beach Munson Van Surdam are buried in this family plot. Beulah Beech was my mother. She is buried between her grandmother Emily Wood Munson and her mother Mabel Munson Wood. I do not know why Della Canfield and Carlos Walter are not buried here. My mother was one of 4 children, 3 girls and a boy. I do not know why she is the only one of her siblings buried here, or for that matter the only one of her generation, except that her early death was within a decade of when her parents and aunts died. Her placement next to her grandmother and mother is special. Hers is the last grave here. Cora Mallory's family owned the Mallory Steamship Line, also providing passenger service from New York to Bermuda. Her marriage to Frank C. Munson facilitated the merger of the two business lines. The company was overextended in the credit crisis following the 1929 stock market crash and folded in 1938 but family money remained sufficient to give these two their grand graves here. Cora Mallory endowed the Munson Institute of Maritime Studies in 1955 at the Mystic Seaport Museum.

Glory Days

Litchfield Images 1923 1924 1939 Beulah Beech Wood