MEMORIAL PARKS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 26 June 1943, Page 3

MEMORIAL PARKS

NEW TYPE OF CEMETERY

THE FOREST LAWN IDEAL ADOPTION BY NELSON CITY COUNCIL The Nelson City Council’s decision to adopt the Forest Lawn principle in the lay-out of the new cemetery area at Wakapuaka has been well received by the public. The modern idea of making cemeteries memorial parks with some claim to aesthetic beauty comes from America where the Los Angeles burial place, known as Forest Lawn, covers an area of 200 acres of sweeping lawns, trees, lakes, and lovely statuary. Bruce Barton, writing of this, said: — “Nothing in Los Angeles gives me a finer thrill than Forest Lawn. The cemeteries of the world cry out men’s hopelessness in the face of death. Their symbols are pagan and pessimistic; their damp precincts add a final horror to the grief of parting; their upkeep is neglected; their very atmosphere is oppressive. No wonder that men shun them even in the sunlight, and pass by with eyes averted on the other side. Forest Lawn is different. Here every tree and shrub and flower proclaims that ‘life is ever lord of death, and love can never lose its own.’ Here happy couples come to be married in the Little Church of the Flowers. Here sorrow sees no ghastly monuments but only life and hope. I like the statues of little children, stepping gaily into life like new souls into Heaven. I like the statues of beautiful women; and most of all I like big Moses, that giant among men, who did his work and lay down to slumber unafraid, sure that the God to whom he had talked would talk with him again. “Visitors come from everywhere. I could wish that they might go home to remodel their own cemeteries after the pattern of Forest Lawn—a noble resting place for the departed, and a perpetual life for those who live. Not till that happens will we be able to call ourselves a truly Christian nation. For we worship a Master who loved and laughed; to whom little children flocked, and in whose presence sick people found new health and joy. A Master who on the very night before His death could say, ‘Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world,’ and ‘Because I live, ye shall also live.’ Surely if this faith is real to us our burying grounds should proclaim it in accents of beauty and power. The followers of a triumphant Master should sleep in grounds more lovely than where they have lived—a park so beautiful that it seems a little bit above the level of this world, a first step toward Heaven.” Attached to this ideal in cemeteries is a crematorium, which has, as an adjunct, a beautifully designed columbarium, where people so minded may keep the ashes of their dead in neat marble or glass-fronted niches, which are usually adorned with bronze wall vases for the reception of flowers.

HOW FOREST LAWN WAS CREATED

On New Year’s Day. 1317, a man stood on a hilltop overlooking the small cemetery of some 55 acres, which had just been placed in his charge. He saw no buildings, only a patch of lawn and a few straggling headstones. Beyond the scant dozen acres of developed ground the hillsides rose, sere and brown. In that moment a vision came to the man of what this tiny ‘God’s acre” might become; and standing there, he made a promise to the Infinite. When he reached home he put his promise into words and called it “The Builder’s Creed.” To-day Forest Lawn’s 200 acres are eloquent witnesses that the builder kept faith with his soul. The creed is as follows: “I believe in a happy eternal life. ‘I believe that those of us left behind should be glad in the certain belief that those who have gone before have entered into that happier life.

“I believe, most of all, in a Christ that smiles and loves you and me. “I therefore know the cemeteries of to-day are wrong because they depict an end, not a beginning. They have consequently become unsightly stone yards full of inartistic symbols and depressing customs: places that do nothing for humanity save a practical act, and that not well.

“I therefore prayerfully resolve on this New Year’s Day, 1917, that I shall endeavour to build Forest Lawn as different, as unlike other cemeteries as sunshine is unlike darkness, as eternal life is unlike death. I shall try to build Forest Lawn as a great park, devoid of misshapen monuments and other customary signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, singing birds, beautiful statuary, cheerful flowers, noble memorial architecture with interior full of light and colour, and redolent of the world’s best history and romances.

“I believe that these things educate and uplift a community. ‘Forest Lawn shall become a place where lovers, new and old, shall love to stroll and watch the sunset’s glow planning for the future or reminiscing of the past: a place where artists study and sketch: where school teachers bring happy children to see the things they read of in books; where little churches invite triumphant in the knowledge that from their pulpits only words of love can be spoken; where memorialisation of loved ones in sculptured marble and pictorial glass shall be encouraged but controlled by acknowledged artists; a place where the sorrowing will be soothed and strengthened because it will be God’s garden. A place that will be protected by an immense public care fund the principal of which can never be expended, only the income therefrom used to care for and perpetuate this Garden of Memory. “This is the builder’s dream: this is the builder’s creed.”