By Joel Thurtell
From its website, you’d think the people who run Ann Arbor’s Forest Hill Cemetery must be an open, caring and warmhearted crew dedicated to inspiring lots of people to visit the city’s historic graveyard alongside the University of Michigan.
You would be wrong.
The cemetery’s board of directors has told local historian Wystan Stevens — who’s been giving tours of the cemetery for 30 years — that he’s persona non grata.
Vamoose!
Get lost!
Don’t let our graveyard gate hit your butt!
Apparently, somebody didn’t like this guy’s brand of history.
Outa here, fella!
Guess journalists aren’t the only people who get censored.
And yet, boy, you sure wouldn’t pick up on the censorious mentality of that board from the gushing, open-arms salute they give you on their website:
Welcome to Forest Hill Cemetery
Welcome to Forest Hill Cemetery. Its historical architecture greets you at the gate. It urges you to enter; to view the towering, stately trees and its natural quiet setting. It’s a remarkable haven nestled within Ann Arbor and the sprawling campus of the University of Michigan. As you view this website, please keep in mind that Forest Hill is an unfinished landscape which welcomes all.
Despite the glow given off from their website, the board is just not into the welcome thing.
Why would anyone care to tour this cemetery?
Well, it’s full of the bones Ann Arbor founders, mayors, University of Michigan law profs and such luminaries as UM football coaches Bo Schembechler and Fielding Yost, UM track star and football announcer Bob Ufer, Michigan governors Alpheus Felch, UM presidents James Burrill Angell, Marion LeRoy Burton, Henry Simmons Frieze, Harry Burns Hutchins and Alexander Grant Ruthven. The list of once important and now mostly forgotten bigwigs goes on and on.
According to free lance writer Jim Pruitt in the Ann Arbor Journal, “uncomplimentary complaints” were mentioned as a possible reason for the ban on Stevens’ tours.
In a letter to historian and tour leader Wystan Stevens, according to the Journal, the cemetery board pointed out that Forest Hill Cemetery is private property and people need the board’s permission before entering. The cemetery is run by a private, nonprofit corporation.
Huh?
What happened to “Welcome to Forest Hill Cemetery”?
And all that “historical architecture” waiting to “greet” me “at the gate” that “just urges” me “to enter”?
I thought Forest Hill was an “unfinished landscape which welcomes all.”
Well, all except Wystan Stevens, and, so it appears, anyone else who doesn’t seek the board’s permission to enter.
Or whose brand of history doesn’t suit the board.
It’s a rainy Sunday morning, but I suddenly have a yen to visit a historic graveyard.
I would not want to be arrested for trespassing.
How do I get permission to tour the cemetery?
Aha! I’ve got it!
That gushing website!
Why, it’s an open invitation to the public to tour the place.
I’ll just print out a copy of the cemetery’s “Welcome to Forest Hill.”
Seems like that should be enough to get me past security.
Doesn’t it?
As for Wystan Stevens, he says he’s done giving tours.
Not me.
I’m just starting.
See you at Forest Hill!
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
Just keep an eye out for gun-totin’ goons.