* In Our Town (Thornton's and Mine)

The  Sleeping Giant,
Mt. Carmel Connecticut

Letter to the Editor

Yale Alumni Magazine

Dear Editor:

The Dean of Yale Divinity School,Gregory Sterling, and the former Mayor of Hamden, Craig Henrici, have agreed to search for worthy candidates for two graves in my family plot in Mt. Carmel Burying Ground,  whose titles I transferred to attorney Henrici last month, seeking to find those in need of  a final resting place, hopefully persons associated with U.S. veterans.

One of these graves created  national news  last May when I offered it to the Tsarnaev family for their son, the slain Boston bomber suspect, a gift offered in memory of my mother, Barabara W. Keane who taught Sunday School at the Mt. Carmel Congregational Church for 30 years, and who taught me to “love thine enemy.”  A political firestorm and protest erupted in the New Haven Register and protests flooded the Hamden Mayor’s office, including an injunction threatening to prevent the Mt. Carmel burial should it be attempted.

 A few days after that media frenzy, a religious group in Virginia headed by a woman who cited the same Biblical passage as I had cited , arranged for Tsarnaev’s burial in an Islamist part of a remote  cemetery in that state..

I would ask your readers to consider submitting the names of worthy possible candidates to Dean Gregory Sterling at 409 Prospect Street, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT 06520. My preference is for the graves to go to families associated with U.S. veterans, but that is simply a preference and is not mandatory.

 This is an idyllic New England cemetery which has graves going back to the 1700’s and is located at the foot of the Sleeping Giant, adjacent to the golf course.  These two graves are 100 yards from the grave of another Yale alumnus, author Thornton Wilder, who created the most famous cemetery in American literature in his play, Our Town. These final resting places are available free of charge and are given in memory of my mother. They are not side by side, but are both in the same family plot. two spaces from each other, and perhaps, therefore, are more suited to individuals  than to a couple, depending on personal wishes.

Sincerely,

Paul D.Keane

M. Div., ‘80