Subject: Gay Tombstone Featured in National Magazine
From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 14:33:28 -0400

For further information, contact the author at The Letter, PO Box 3882,
Louisville, KY  40201.  For permission to reprint, email:  [email-masked].

GAY TOMBSTONE FEATURED IN NATIONAL MAGAZINE

by David Williams

When Norman Nichols of Louisville, a casualty of the AIDS epidemic, was
buried in Cave Hill Cemetery on January 24 of last year, neither he nor his
lover had anything more than a small mound of dirt to mark the spot.  But
knowing that Norman had wanted stained glass worked into his stone, his lover
went to Louisville's Muldoon Memorials and gave them a few ideas about what
he thought Norman would have liked.

He brought along a small rainbow flag they'd purchased in San Francisco at
the 1992 Freedom Day Parade.

The result?  A black African granite stone with Norman's name on the upper
left, his lover's name on the lower right, and in between a stylized flame
bursting with all the colors of the rainbow.  On the marble pedestal beneath
is carved Auntie Mame's immortal saying, slightly reworked at the insistence
of the cemetery:  "Life is a banquet, and most poor souls are starving to
death."  (Cemetery officials felt that "souls" was more appropriate to the
setting than the movie's word, "suckers").  The saying had been the couple's
favorite.

Ironically it backs up against a large plot reserved for faculty and
administrators of Louisville's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which
has a policy of excluding gays and lesbians.  Each morning the sun shines
through the stained glass onto the Baptist plot.

The monument's designer, Terry Joy, was so pleased that he entered it and
several others into a national tombstone contest sponsored by Monument
Builders of North America.  Although it didn't win, two of his other designs
did.  All were featured prominently in the group's June 1996 publication, MB
News.

Joy says that since the article appeared, he's had several inquiries about
the Nichols stone from designers in other parts of the country.

"We are lucky here in Louisville as we have a very artistic community," Joy
was quoted as saying.  "These folks wanted to make a statement with a concept
of art."

The newer section of the cemetery boasts many other stones for same-sex
couples and people who have died of AIDS.  Located at the eastern end of
Broadway in Louisville's Highlands neighborhood, Cave Hill Cemetery is a
nationally recognized arboretum filled with non- indigenous trees and shrubs.
 Its most prominent feature is a large lake, complete with swans, ducks, and
geese.  Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of KFC, Inc., is buried on the
grounds, as is George Rogers Clark, founder of Louisville.