Grave saying and old-fashioned trust restored

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/08/2011 (5368 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE WILL IS THE WAY… Learning never stops — or at least it shouldn’t — which is something my former history teacher at St. James Collegiate is still teaching me.

Every so often Norm Larsen will drop me a line, sharing a thought, an idea or an experience about life in general. And sometimes even death.

The other day, Norm sent an email with an attached photo that featured a headstone in Rossburn with a teaching moment carved in stone.

And a humorous one at that.

Norm had heard about the headstone from friends, Brian and Monique Everton. So when Norm and his partner, Linda, were attending the Neepawa Lily Festival, they decided to take a side journey to Rossburn.

The name on the headstone is Jerry Edmond Alexander, who died in 2009 at the age of 81. They found what they were looking for on the other side.

“Friend, as you pass by as you are, once I was. As I am, soon you will be. Prepare yourself to follow me.

“Make a will Dummy.”

And it turns out that, not surprisingly, there are a lot of “dummies” out there.

According to a poll carried out last year by the national fundraising consultants Good Works, about 53 per cent of Canadian adults have a will.

Those least likely to have a will are residents of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, less than half of whom have legal estate plans in case they drop dead today.

Mind you, the number of people with wills increases dramatically the older we get. Almost 80 per cent of Canadians over the age of 50 have wills.

I’m not sure what the rest of you “dummies” are waiting for, but please take this as a timely reminder. All it really takes is a little will power.

Which brings us back to Jerry Edmond Alexander. My former history teacher gave me the assignment of finding out more about the deceased man and why he left the message. I called his widow, Mary, and started with the most obvious question.

Was he a lawyer?

“No,” she said.

They ran a beauty supply business together.

So why the “Make a will Dummy.”

“He had a sense of humour,” Mary said.

I just had one more question for Mary. Did he tell you he wanted his last little laugh carved in stone?

“No,” she said again.

It was in his will.

Of course it was.

There is a postscript to this story that suggests Alexander’s headstone not only suggested his sense of humour, but his sense of history. Norm Larsen bought a book recently, Latin Quips at Your Fingertips (2000) by Rose Williams.

This was the last entry.

“I am what you will be.

“(Quod sum eris. — Epitaph on a Roman tombstone.)”

— — —

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED TO LEMONADE STANDS… Last week I was asking whatever happened to old-fashioned lemonade stands — and trust.

Lots of people, and even kids, wrote in to say lemonade stands are still going strong. But an email from Beverley Watson stood out.

It started:

“My ol’ memory won’t allow me to include the name of the place, or even the year right now. But here’s what I do remember about my lemonade stand story. Small town U.S.A.; a few summers ago: Fifty cyclists from Winnipeg set out on a 1,000-mile bike trip to raise money for Habitat for Humanity. Our starting point was Denver.

“Halfway through the trip, we arrived in one of the many communities that offered us food and accommodations for the night. On our way to the local rec centre, we noticed a lemonade stand on a lovely tree-lined residential street. The young proprietors were very excited with the arrival of their new-found customers. Most of the cyclists plus a few of the support crew pulled over to take advantage of a moment in the shade and the 25-cent refreshment.

“Fast-forward a few hours now.

“We’ve just finished dinner at the rec centre, when suddenly the main doors open and a group of children, and a few parents, make their way to the front of the room. A young boy hands me a little canister. It was filled with $38.25 in coins from their lemonade stand.

“The parents had explained to their children that we were cycling to raise money for Habitat for Humanity. Once the children heard that we were helping other children get homes, they wanted to help us help them.

“I can’t write this without reliving that moment, and my eyes are welling once again. We raised over $200,000 that year alone. But that $38.25 was worth a million.”

Now you know what’s happened to lemonade stands. Today, a lot of kids are giving the money to charity, instead of keeping it for themselves. Which makes what’s happened to old-fashioned trust all the more puzzling.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca