Dead Bolt

If there’s one thing that’s sure to keep people running, it’s fear — not endurance. And let’s face it: Most of our fears point — with a bony, skeletal finger — toward death.

That’s why area runners might want to sign up for the first annual Graveyard 5K Run and Family Walk, which takes participants on a marked course through the vine-covered grounds of Elmwood Cemetery at the intersection of Truman Road and Van Brunt. While jogging down the hilly path known as Mausoleum Row — lined, as one might expect, with elaborately carved final resting places for entire families — joggers may be tempted to stop and look at the steel latticework on the doorways. But sooner or later, a reminder of death is bound to scare ’em back on track.

It’s an unusual idea, hosting a family run in a graveyard. “Elmwood Cemetery is in financial trouble and has been for some time,” explains Pamela Gray. “Basically, there’s no revenue. It’s not an active burial ground. You may see a burial here, but that space was probably bought 25 years ago.” The money raised by the event will help in the effort to repair damage to the site, caused in equal parts by age and vandalism.

That deterioration is particularly disturbing because part of a cemetery’s purpose is to create the appearance that every dead person leaves behind something of concrete permanence, even if it’s just a stone.

In Elmwood, many of the tombstones are adorned with statues of family members — and some of these have lost their heads. Take, for example, the stone on which Anna M. Gruettner inscribed “In memory of my beloved husband, Gustav Adolph Gruettner, February 5, 1852 – January 14, 1900.” The engraving also mentions that Anna is the wife of someone named A.F. Barbe — which seems odd when you consider that Gustav has already been named as her husband. Adding to the seemingly tragic mysteriousness of this stone, its mention of “the infant son of A.F. and A.M. Barbe.” Creepiest of all is the accompanying statue of a woman holding what appear to be flowers. Her head is nowhere to be seen, and she’s fallen off of her foundation so that she leans against the stone instead. Is this Anna? All we can say is, yikes.

Some of Elmwood’s headstones are sinking into the softening ground that holds them. The engraved lettering on one tombstone has faded so that you have to look at it from a certain angle to know that the person resting beneath it is “gone, but not forgotten.”

But Elmwood, for all its decay, is also beautiful in a way that newer cemeteries generally are not. “Elmwood was a cemetery in the beautiful nineteenth-century style,” Gray says. “People were starting to look at death a little differently.” Travel in that era was time-consuming, and people visiting family members in cemeteries tended to stay for picnics on the gardenlike grounds.

You aren’t likely to see the kind of elaborate tombstone found here elsewhere in town, partly because of the site’s age and partly because of the notoriety and wealth of the people buried here: Jesse James’ wife, Zeralda; the Nelson-Atkins Museum’s Mary Atkins; the famous boarding-house madam Annie Chambers; and parks man August Meyer. They’ll be among the twenty characters portrayed by actors during a living-history tour before the run, and they’ll be standing by their stones for the duration of the event.

If you want to scare them away, wear something — in good taste — for the costume contest. “We want it to be a fun day and a healthy way of enjoying Halloween in a way that’s still reverent and respectful,” Gray says.