Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery
Established in 1989.Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery is the official name given to a cemetery located at 2300 West Van Buren Street in Phoenix, Arizona. The cemetery, which resulted as a merger of two historical cemeteries, is the final resting place of various notable citizens of Arizona. Pioneers, governors, congressman, government officials, journalists, race car drivers, soldiers, actors and actresses are among the many notable citizens who are interred in the cemetery.
History
Late 19th century
horse-drawn hearse on display in Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery
Greenwood Memorial Park, the first of the two cemeteries which make up Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery, was established in 1906, by the Arizona Lodge No. 2 of the Free and Accepted Masons. The first early structures in the cemetery were a crematorium, a columbarium and a mausoleum.
The Shumway family established another cemetery to the west of the Greenwood Memorial Park in 1947, named Memory Lawn Memorial Park. A fence separated the cemetery from the Greenwood Memorial Park. This cemetery added a mortuary, memory mausoleum and chapel in 1957.
In 1989, both cemeteries merged and became the Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery. The cemetery joined the Dignity Memorial network which serve as the providers of funeral, cremation and cemetery services.
Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery with its 192 acres is the largest cemetery in Arizona.[1] The cemetery has 59 sections, including a front lawn section, a veterans garden and various other cultural and religious gardens.[2]
Notable burials
John H. Kibbey (c. 1913)
William John Murphy (c.1905)
Lincoln Johnson Ragsdale, Sr. (1945)
Walter Winchell (1960)
Edith Luckett Davis and daughter Nancy (1931)
Among the notable people interred in the cemetery are three Arizona Territory Governors, six Arizona State Governors, a Secretary of Arizona Territory, a U.S. Congressman, a Mayor of Phoenix, two recipients of the Medal of Honor, the founder of Glendale, Arizona, race-car drivers, including the winner of the 1958 Indianapolis 500, journalists and the parents of a former First lady.
- Frederick A. Tritle - Tritle served as the 6th Governor of the Arizona Territory from 1882-1885.
- John H. Kibbey - Kibbey served as Associate Justice of the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court from 1889 to 1893 and as the 16th Governor of Arizona Territory from 1905 to 1909. As governor, Kibbey was a leader in the effort to prevent Arizona and New Mexico territories from being combined into a single U.S. state.
- Richard Elihu Sloan - Sloan was the 17th and last Governor Arizona Territory. He served from 1909 to 1912.
- John C. Phillips - Phillips was the 3rd Governor of the State of Arizona (1929-1931).[7]
- Rawghlie Clement Stanford - Stanford was the 5th Governor of the State of Arizona (1937-1939).[8]
- Robert Taylor Jones - Jones served as the 6th Governor of Arizona from 1939 to 1941.[9]
- Ernest William McFarland - McFarland served as U.S. Senator (1941 - 1953), the 10th Governor of Arizona (1955-1959) and Arizona Supreme Court Justice (1968).[10]
- Paul Jones Fannin - Fannin served as U.S. Senator from 1965 to 1977 and as the 11th Governor of Arizona from 1959 to 1965.[11]
- Sidney Preston Osborn - Osborn was the first Secretary of State of Arizona, and later the seventh Governor of Arizona and is, as of 2015, the only governor of Arizona to be elected to four consecutive terms (Governors of Arizona served biennial terms with no limits up until 1968, when it was changed to serve quadrennial terms, and changed again in 1992 to a limit of two terms at a time). Osborn is also the second native-born governor of Arizona.[12]
- George Ulysses Young - Young served as Secretary of Arizona Territory (1909-1912) and as the 28th Mayor of Phoenix 1914-1916). As a businessman he invested in railroads and then transitioned his business interests to mining.
- Robert “Bob” Lee Stump - Stump was a U.S. Congressman who served for the Democratic Party and later switched to the Republican Party.[14]
- John Nickolas Udall - Udall (a.k.a. Nick Udall)served as the Mayor of Phoenix from 1948 to 1952.[15]
- Andrew J. Weaher - Weaher (a.k.a. Weaber) was an American soldier in the U.S. Army who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1868, after engaging the Native-American tribe, the Apaches in the Black Mountains of Arizona.[16]
- Oscar Palmer Austin - Austin was a United States Marine who in 1969, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Vietnam War.[17]
- Dr. Lincoln Johnson Ragsdale, Sr. - Dr. Ragsdale was a former Tuskegee Airman who became a Civil Rights leader in Phoenix.[18]
- William John Murphy - Murphy was the founder of the city of Glendale, Arizona.[19]
- Walter Winchell - Winchell was a newspaper columnist who is credited with inventing the gossip column.[20]
- Don Bolles - Bolles (birth name: Donald Fifield Bolles) was an American investigative reporter whose murder in a car bombing has been linked to the Mafia.[21]
- Jimmy Bryan - Bryan was a race-car driver who won the 1958 Indianapolis 500.[22]
- Harold "Habe" F. Haberling - Haberling was a competitor in the NASCAR Sportsman Modified Series who died in 1961, in an accident while practicing for the 250 mile race in Daytona.[23]
- Loyal and Edith Davis - Loyal was a prominent neurosurgeon. Edith Luckett Davis, a former actress and wife of Loyal, was the mother of the former first lady Nancy Reagan.[24]
Grave sites
| Historic Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery |
|---|
| Grave-site of Joseph H. Kibbey (March 4, 1853-June 14, 1924) and Nora Burbank Kibbey (1867-1923). |
| The crypt containing the cremated remains of George Ulysses Young (1867-1926) and Mary E. Young (1884-1940). |
| The crypt of Donald Fifield Bolles, better known as Don Bolles (1928-1976). |
|
See also
References
- ↑ History
- ↑ Dignity Memorial
- ↑
- Goff, John F. Arizona Biographical Dictionary. Black Mountain Press. Cave Creek, Arizona 1983. p. 263
- ↑ http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=515177
- ↑ "Arizona Governor Robert Taylor Jones". Former Governors' Bios. National Governors Association. May 3, 2002.
- ↑ Biography from the Senate
- ↑ Sobel, Robert; Raimo, John (1978). Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978. I. Westport, CT: Meckler Books.
- ↑ "Arizona Governor Sidney Preston Osborn". Former Governors' Bios. National Governors Association. May 3, 2002.
- ↑ Silverman, Amy (1993-10-13), "The Stealth Congressman", Phoenix New Times, Phoenix New Times
- ↑ Arizona Republic
- ↑ Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs. Medal of Honor recipients, 1863-1973, 93rd Cong., 1st sess. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1973. (pg. 329)
- ↑ Smith, Charles (1988). U.S. Marines in Vietnam: High Mobility and Standdown 1969. History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps. p. 359. ISBN 978-1494287627.
- ↑ Black Past
- ↑ Arizona Archives Online
- ↑ Obituary Variety, February 23, 1972, page 71.
- ↑ "Don Bolles' tragic death". Michigan Daily. 1976-06-16.
- ↑ 1957 Race of Two Worlds Monza on YouTube
- ↑ Kahn, Bernard (February 22, 1961). "Racing Driver Dies in Practice Run". Daytona Beach Morning Journal. Daytona Beach, FL. p. 1.
- ↑ New York Times
External links
Coordinates: 33°27′25″N 112°06′47″W / 33.457°N 112.113°W / 33.457; -112.113
