Bonaventure cemetery

No rest for the wicked, so we are off to an early 9 am start to see the Bonaventure Cemetery. It was an interesting and beautiful place to visit, on a rather chilly morning. I loved how the light the sun filtered through the trees on the old gravestones. Bonaventure has massive live oak trees with arched limbs covered in Spanish moss overhanging her roadways. I read that the live oak trees in Bonaventure today are nearly 250 years old. The monuments and vistas are part of charm of Bonaventure, which continues to be a working cemetery. Perpetuity written on a stone at one of graves, it was present here.

Wikipedia says: Bonaventure Cemetery is a rural cemetery located on a scenic bluff of the Wilmington River, east of Savannah. The beautiful cemetery became famous when it was featured in the 1994 novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, and in the subsequent movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, based on the book. Military generals, poet Conrad Aiken,
Academy Award-winning lyricist Johnny Mercer and Georgia’s first governor Edward Telfair are among those buried at Bonaventure.

Especially famous after Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil book’s success, The Bird Girl statue, that is on the cover of the book, became very popular. Bonaventure and the Trosdal lot, where the statue was located, were inundated with tourists, and Bird Girl was removed from the cemetery and placed in the Telfair Museum. So we didn’t see the Bird Girl but I can highly recommend visiting thecemetery.

I have to mention Johnny Mercer who was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallichs. You might know quite a few of Mercer’s songs, including “Moon River”, “Days of Wine and Roses”, “Autumn Leaves”, “Hooray for Hollywood”, “Jeepers Creepers”, and “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” He received nineteen Oscar nominations and won four Best Original Song Oscars.