©Copyright 1996-1998 ChrisTina Leimer
The Tombstone Traveller's Guide

They're numerous enough to notice. Infrequent enough to startle at seeing. They stimulate reverence, disgust, sorrow, regret, sympathy, anxiety, curiosity, empathy, remembrance, revulsion and fear. For most of us, these memorials are not neutral objects in our landscape. They affect us to one degree or another. In Orlando, Florida, disc jockey Jim Phillips of WTKS was so appalled at what he considered tacky, macabre, disingenuous and nasty that he and his radio station offered free T-shirts for uprooting the memorials and taking them to the station to be
trashed. They got enough takers to fill up a storeroom with this roadside folk art.

You can see these roadside markers in nearly every state, from Maryland to Georgia, to Michigan, Oklahoma, and California, but they hardly litter the roadways. On a recent 3,000 mile driving trip from Houston, Texas through central and northern New Mexico, I saw no more than 15-20 markers. Whether erected through some formal program, like the white crosses from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in Texas and the American Legion in Montana, or through individual effort and initiative, every roadside memorial marks a spot where someone died, usually in an automobile accident, and where someone else's life was irreparably changed by the death of a person they love. At that spot, human bonds were broken, suddenly, unexpectedly, and often senselessly. That ground is the last place the person was alive on this earth, and for some, the place where God called the person home, or where the soul left the body.

Where this rite began, how it has spread, how it's been adapted and how its meaning and use might vary between cultures are questions with uncertain answers. You can see roadside memorials in Greece, where they range from simple crosses with the name of the deceased to elaborate glass-fronted niches with candles, icons of a patron saint and a picture of the dead. Roadside memorials exist in Egypt, Germany, Australia, Yucatan and probably in many other parts of the world that I don't yet know about. In Montana, the American Legion Highway White Cross Program was launched in 1953 in Missoula. When six people from the area died in car crashes over the 1952 Labor Day weekend, Floyd Earheart proposed placing crosses at fatality sites and the program has waxed and waned ever since. In the southwestern U.S., roadside memorials likely stem from Mexican customs. Centuries ago, when the body was carried from the church to the camposanto (cemetery) the pallbearers occasionally paused to rest. These resting places, known as descansos, were marked with shrines or shelters. Inside the cemetery were descansos at all four corners. Pallbearers stopped at each corner descanso where they said part of the rosary before finally moving to the gravesite. But graveyards were not always accessible. When herdsmen or travellers were found dead on the trail, they were buried there and a cross was left to mark the site. The custom of cemetery descansos has mostly died out, but marking the death site with a cross or shrine is a continuing tradition. The shrines are still called descansos. And they still symbolize an " interrupted journey on the road of life."

In the U.S., roadside memorials almost always include a cross in the design. Some are wooden, some metal. Paper or plastic flowers and ribbons adorn the centerpiece, and sometimes serve as the entire memorial. A simple ribbon or wreath tied to a tree, bridge or telephone pole becomes a subtle message to those who notice. Some memorials include small bushes or planted flowers, rocks, candles, benches, or niches filled with personal mementoes and religious icons. Even parts from the wrecked vehicle might be used in the design. Many of these memorials are anonymous to passersby; the names of the dead known only to friends, family, the surrounding community. If there is an inscription, it usually includes the name of the deceased and the death date. Sometimes they include the relationship of the deceased to survivors, how the person died, or sentiments of grief and loss. I've seen inscriptions that looked like they were written with a felt-tip marker, others that were hand-painted, machine-carved, or scratched into poured concrete. Some roadside memorials are frequently decorated, spruced up for holidays with symbols of the season, like hearts for Valentine's Day, rabbits or baskets for Easter, or evergreen trees, striped candy canes, and jolly red-suited Santas for Christmas. The deceased's birthday might be marked by balloons or notes added to the memorial, and the anniversary of the death might prompt new additions of flowers, photos, pinwheels, toys, and personal mementoes, or a fresh coat of paint.

Roadside memorials are generally put up soon after the death, often within days. Unlike the funeral, which is to varying degrees formal and structured, and which must be planned to accommodate many people, these memorials can be created and put up immediately, giving shocked and grieving survivors a way to act quickly, directly, urgently to a situation that is otherwise out of their control. Also unlike the funeral or other memorials, roadside memorials mark the ground where the person died rather than being erected in a location specifically set aside for graves and memorials, perhaps helping to retain the reality, the rawness of the death that cosmetics, caskets, and professionalization tends to assuage. Whether to help the reality set in, to try to re-connect with the deceased loved one, to search for literal or metaphorical clues that will help survivors understand how the accident happened, how their loved one could suddenly cease to exist, or to purify or cleanse the spot in an effort to right a wrong, these memorials help the healing begin for the many survivors who want to see where their loved one died. But other survivors don't like the memorials; the reminder is just too painful.

In Mexico and South Texas, Hispanics who participate in this rite usually place a temporary wooden cross at the site. The memorial might be expanded later or a more elaborate memorial created. Much like gravesites, some roadside memorials are visited often, some only once or twice. These memorials can be focal points for mourning the deceased, for mourning other losses, and, especially for teenagers, solemn places to seek solace from general life problems. They can promote social change, like the markers that remind us of the deadly effects of drunk driving, or the marker placed by John Crouch for his daughter Raquel who was "murdered and left here March 26, 1997 by Kareem J. Wilson and the Mandatory Release Law." Sometimes roadside memorials help punish the perpetrator. Anger is part of grief, and these markers can be a way that survivors try to prick the conscience of the killer and drive home the seriousness of the killing. In Texas, at least one judge requires people who killed someone by driving drunk to face the reality of their actions by sentencing them to install a MADD marker at the site of the accident.

If they escape vandals and crashes at the same site, roadside memorials can remain for years. Some are periodically maintained and decorated. A few blocks from my house is a MADD marker for an 11-year-old girl who was killed by a drunk driver at that location in 1989 yet, about 3 times each year, someone puts new flowers or other decorations on the cross. For a Kentucky couple whose son was killed in a car crash, the roadside memorial they created for him is the closest thing they have to visiting his grave. The young man was buried in West Virginia with his girlfriend, who also died in the accident.

As testament to the power of these memorials, roadside memorial programs sanctioned by government entities or organizations have been challenged on many fronts: as a violation of the separation of church and state, as a nuisance that should be regulated under billboard laws since they are, in the words of one city councilman, "visual pollution," and as offensive to atheists and non-Christian religious groups. In January 1997, the Florida Department of Transportation began removing unauthorized memorials from roadsides and erecting, if family or friends request it in writing, standardized white plastic markers with the words Drive Safely and the name of the deceased. Initially these markers were white crosses but due to public flack over the religious symbolism of the cross, they halted the program, changed the design to a circle, and reinstituted it.

In most areas police and highway departments recognize the grief that prompts these memorials and try to respect it by allowing the markers to remain where they're placed unless they cause some problem or are too close to the road. But in some areas, like Florida, these memorials have been outlawed and removed because they can impede roadside maintenance, distract drivers, and be a traffic hazard. With telephone poles, road signs, construction barrels, billboards, and roadside stands that line our highways, the concern that these memorials distract drivers seems ludicrous. But it is true that many of these memorials are located on hazardous stretches of road like sharp curves or steep embankments. After all, they are where they are because someone died there in a car crash, and that's less likely to happen on a wide, straight stretch of road with ample shoulders. So be careful if you stop to look at roadside memorials.

Property rights and sentiments about the death site are other potential sources of conflict these memorials can stir up. Usually they're placed on public right of ways but not always. In California, one family whose teenage son was killed in a traffic accident erected a roadside cross at the site. Unfortunately the site, though a county easement, was the property of another family who could see the cross every time they looked out their window. They wanted it removed. For the mother/wife, the marker was an unwanted reminder of the death of her own child. The family that
placed the marker attempted compromise that would allow the marker to stay but be less prominent, but none was ever reached. Eventually the property owner cut the cross down, the police took it to its owners, and they placed it on the opposite side of the road. After getting permission from the owners. For some family members and friends, the ground where their loved one died becomes sacred, something to be protected, even revered. When their memorial at the site is damaged or destroyed, it is a desecration, and inflicts additional emotional pain. Others feel that associating the site with their deceased loved one will make the accident or murder dominate their memories, and they don't want that, don't want the trauma and tragedy to overshadow their living memories of the person they love.

Standardized markers may not work well for memorializing victims, and in fact it seems that is not their primary purpose. They are intended as a public service message; reminding drivers to "Drive Safely," or don't drive drunk. Most standardized markers do include the name of the deceased, but paperwork must be completed to get them authorized, it may take months before they're erected, and then they'll probably be installed by someone other than family or friends. And despite including the victim's name, they're not personal. This is also the problem with admonitions to do something else instead of placing a roadside memorial, something like paying for cleaning up a section of road. Making charitable donations in the name of the deceased is commonly done and offers its own benefits to society and to survivors. But, for many people, that can't replace the healing balm of roadside memorials. Roadside memorials are folk art created out of love and grief. Unfettered by regulations or cost, they are creative acts, restorative acts in the face of destruction. They allow the remembrance to be matched with the death; the death happened in public, the memorial needs to be public, in the very venue that is so intimately connected with the deceased, the place where he died. And since the death was sudden, unexpected, and maybe senseless but not unique, roadside memorials let people know that a particular person, an individual, was alive. They say, we will not let you die unnoticed, you are valuable, you deserve to be remembered. And they invite the world to join in.
 

This memorial is on Hwy 287 heading west, approximately 20 miles  from Amarillo, TX. It marks the place where five young people  were killed in an autombile crash. Hanging on the red and blue cross  is a smiling, cartoonish wooden angel with a wooden heart around  its neck. The heart reads, "Caution Angels Flying." Another wooden  heart is attached to this cross and it says, in handwritten script, On  Feb. 12, 1995, these 5 young friends received their precious angel  wings. Anna, Brad, Cheryl, Jake & Macy. For he shall give his  angels charge over thee, to keep thee in thy ways. Psalms 91:11.  Photo was taken 4/98.
 

These 3 crosses are in Texas near the Mexican border. They mark the spot where a mother and her child and a cousin were killed in an automobile accident. Levanta de la Cruz, or the Raising of the Cross, is a Hispanic custom of marking the spot where the soul leaves the body.
 

The Sanchez marker (left) is located along the border near Laredo. The inscription says that it  was placed in remembrance, from his wife and children.
 

These images and text were originally accessed at http://home.flash.net/~leimer/road.html