Davis Memorial....
Davis Memorial....
Location: From the Jct of US Hwy 36 & 73, go North on 73 to Iowa St, then East to the Mt. Hope Cemetery (follow the signs).
Nearest Town: Hiawatha, KS
Contact: Ph. 785/742-7136
Life-size statues stand under a 50-ton marble canopy, in the middle of a cemetery. The Davis Memorial was quite controversial when John Davis commissioned the work shortly after his wife died in 1930. These were depression years in a small Kansas town which at that time didn't even have a hospital. Townsfolk were outraged that Davis would spend over $200,000 on such a memorial. But as Davis later told Pulitzer Prize winning author Ernie Pyle, "...it's my money, and I spent it the way I pleased." The statues are carved from Italian marble, and in fine detail show this man and wife as they age, with John Davis losing an arm to infection along the way, until he is left alone with the vacant chair symbolic of his loneliness after his wife's death.
There are those in the community who say that since the couple was childless, John Davis did not want Sarah's kin to inherit his fortune, and so he spent it. Others contend that it is just what he said it was: A monument to his love for his wife--love's eternal blossom in this garden of stone.
Vandals, for reasons known only to themselves, have broken a head off one of the statues. Local legend has it that they threw it in the Brown County State Fishing Lake. A subsequent search by divers, and searches made when the lake was drained in the early 1990's for renovation have proved fruitless. (Don't adjust your monitor!! The following photos are in black and white.) Note the fine detail of the marble statues.
