Recently I wrote about Christ Church Cemetery on SSI (you can find that here) and now I want to write about two people buried there that meant a lot to a young Jennifer. Both used a pen but in totally different ways and both told their stories in completely opposite styles. The one thing they had in common is that both were oh-so-interesting!
Jack Davis – What, me worry?
Have I ever mentioned my age? Well, I just turned 50 years old in January and I am 100% a Gen X gal to my core. Fiercely independent? Check. A bit of a rule breaker? Check. A bit of a silly billy? Check. Loved things that pushed the envelope? Check. And that’s why Mad Magazine was made for me.
From the view of a young teen Mad Magazine was absolutely the coolest shit ever published when I was growing up! I had to hide them from my found-Jesus-late-in-life-fundamentalist Christian parents (and add The Grateful Dead, Garbage Pail Kids, Swatch Watches and other cultural touchstones of the mid-80’s & early-90’s to that list) but I kept them and other goodies hidden at friend’s homes, my school locker (*fingers crossed that they wouldn’t get tossed due to a surprise inspections*) and at my job at the local movie theatre. The magazine seems tame in comparison to modern standards but they were very controversial during those days. And of course, it wouldn’t be Mad Magazine without its creative cartoonistry and a lot of that credit goes to founding member Jack Davis.
Even if you aren’t a fan of Mad Magazine you’ll probably still recognize a lot of Davis’ art. Well, you will if you’re over 40 but for those a bit younger he’s probably gone a bit niche.
Davis did artwork for Tales from the Crypt publications, TV Guide, a variety of books and albums (including Johnny Cash, Genesis and the Guess Who), movies posters, non-Mad Magazine comedy publications, stamps for the USPS and sooooo much more. And as an Athens, Georgia resident, you’ll still find many of his cartoons on the wall of older restaurants, bars and offices.
If you can, take a minute to research his works and take a walk down memory lane of the culture of the 50’s through the 90’s told in cartoonish tales…
Eugenia Price – Joy might be God in the marrow of our bones
And if there ever was a flip side to the coin of Mad Magazine then it would be the works of Eugenia Price. In early years, a newly converted-to-Christianity Price wrote inspirational novels for women but that changed in the 1960’s when she visited Christ Church Cemetery. Inspired by the tales of real life individuals buried here, Price shifted her literary focus to all things historical and romantic about the Golden Isles. She wrote Beloved Invader and from there her career trajectory was upwards to even more popularity and forever entangled with the lives of long gone Islanders. Read more about E.P. here.
My Grandmother was a voracious reader and she passed that love down to me by encouraging me to enjoy Babar as a child, Eugenia Price as a teen and then biographies as an adult. Her bookshelves were filled with all these novels and more, and so, in the days before internet and cell phones, I read my way through the shelves and, of course, all things Price. In the 1980’s long summers were made for enjoying books!
I don’t particularly care for Price’s novels today since my tastes lean toward different directions but the books still hold a special place in my heart. Mainly in how they bring up memories. I can’t think of them without envisioning my Grandmother sitting in her straw woven beach chair, green visor hat balanced on her messy bun, a bookmark bearing the legend of some Catholic saint tucked into a novel, reading aloud to us as we drowsed in the sun on the sands of East Beach…
Eugenia Price died in 1996 and is buried in Christ Church Cemetery next to her partner of many years Joyce Blackburn. I do find it so very lovely that she is buried in the same cemetery with all of those whose lives inspired her to write her novels.
Her stone reads “After her conversion to Jesus Christ, October 2, 1949, she wrote ‘Light … and eternity and love and all are mine at last.’”
