The Green, Green Grass of Home

If Bruce Springsteen was Born to Run, then members of my family were born to offer condolences and sympathy.

How else to explain the building excitement at the oldest daughter, and her husband in buying a house that's within a wreath toss of a famous cemetery.

Gate of Heaven is well known because of the cemetery itself, and by the notables buried there. It is located in Westchester County, just north of the Bronx, which is one of NYC's five boroughs. Thus, the place is full of New Yorkers.

Gate of Heaven has something for every member of my family, including myself. My wife is most excited by the proposed house purchase because a drive to it will take her through some very familiar parts of her growing up in the Bronx. It will also allow her to finally "visit the Hanleys." They are contemporaries of her own parents, who she of course was fond of as a kid. If you passed away after living in the Bronx and were not Jewish, you were either buried in Woodlawn, or Gate of Heaven. My wife's own parents are buried in St. Rose of Lima, Freehold, New Jersey, which is a subject for an entirely different entry. I remember my father-in-law saying something to the effect that tax-free land is tax-free land, no matter where you are. And tax-free land in New Jersey was cheaper than in New York.

My daughter, who has already patrolled Maspeth's Mt. Olivet in search of her paternal grandparents, will enjoy the proximity to Gate of Heaven. Her husband's grandmother is buried there, as well as Babe Ruth and Billy Martin, two figures that will guarantee her husband's attention--after grandma.

My own interest will be peeked by the fact that Jimmy Cagney is buried there. Cagney, my father and I went to the same high school in Manhattan. I was reminded of Cagney's attendance there when on Day One the home room teacher told us that Cagney might have sat in "that seat over there." And well he might have. The desks were the same as when the place was new, and that was 1904.

Jimmy Walker, New York's graft-plagued carousing mayor with the tin box is buried there. The list goes on. Notables, and hardly notables.

Home Sweet Home.

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