But I did have a little trouble with the other trustees. They balked
when I explained that Remington Solander wanted the sole radio
loud-speaking rights of our cemetery, but some one finally suggested
that if Remington Solander put up a new and artistic iron fence around
the whole cemetery it might be all right. They made him submit his
fourteen volumes so they could see what sort of matter he meant to
broadcast from his high-class station, and they agreed it was solemn
enough; it was all solemn and sad and gloomy, just the stuff for a
cemetery. So when Remington Solander agreed to build the new iron fence
they made a formal contract with him, and I drew up the clause for the
will, and he bought six lots on top of the high knoll and began erecting
his marble mausoleum.
* * * * *
For eight months or so Remington Solander was busier than he had ever
been in his life. He superintended the building of the tomb and he had
on hand the job of getting his endowed radio station going--it was given
the letters WZZZ--and hiring artists to sing and play and speechify his
fourteen volumes of gloom and uplift at 327 meters, and it was too much
for the old codger. The very night the test of the WZZZ outfit was made
he passed away and was no more on earth.
His funeral was one of the biggest we ever had in Westcote. I should
judge that five thousand people attended his remains to the cemetery,
for it had become widely known that the first WZZZ program would be
received and loud-spoken from Remington Solander's tomb that afternoon,
the first selection on the program--his favorite hymn--beginning as the
funeral cortege left the church and the program continuing until dark.
I'll say it was one of the most affecting occasions I have ever
witnessed. As the body was being carried into the tomb the loud speaker
gave us a sermon by Rev. Peter L. Ruggus, full of sob stuff, and every
one of the five thousand present wept. And when the funeral was really
finished, over two thousand remained to hear the rest of the program,
which consisted of hymns, missionary reports, static and recitations of
religious poems. We increased the price of the lots in the new addition
one hundred dollars per lot immediately, and we sold four lots that
afternoon and two the next morning. The big metropolitan newspapers all
gave the Westcote Cemetery full page illustrated articles the next
Sunday, and we received during the next week over three hundred letters,
mostly from ministers, praising what we had done.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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