Become a Member!
by George Maley
Originally published in the July-August 2015 issue of the Hoosier Horn
On May 9th, Indiana Region Members enjoyed a double header of two great but very different venues. The morning event will be covered here, while the afternoon tour of the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s special exhibit “Dream Cars: Innovative Designs, Visionary Ideals” will be explored elsewhere in the Hoosier Horn.
The Saturday morning tour of Crown Hill started at 10:00 am. A tour guide was originally slated to lead the group through one of the largest cemeteries in the country, but a series of unforeseen problems prevented this. Event chairman George Maley stepped in to lead the group through the cemetery for the balance of the morning. Maley took the group by car over to the National Cemetery, which was founded early on during the Civil War. Indianapolis was home to a prisoner of war camp for Confederate soldiers, many of whom died during the war while interned. Both Union and Confederate dead are buried here. Oliver P. Morton, wartime Governor of the State of Indiana, has a very fine memorial at the cemetery. It was through his friendship with attorney and financier John Lanier of Madison, Indiana that the war was financed. Morton prevailed upon him to market long term U.S. Treasury bonds to help Lincoln finance the war effort. Prior to this, the only means of raising money for the government was by tariff on imported goods. Many of the revenue centers were located in the Confederacy, including Richmond, VA, Charleston, SC, Savannah, GA and New Orleans, thereby restricting funding to the Federal government.
From the National Cemetery, Maley took the group to the top of Crown Hill where James Whitcomb Riley is buried. Riley is known as the children’s poet. At the base of the hill is the somewhat simple gravesite of the 23rd President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison. He was a general in the Civil War and later a United States senator. His political career was topped by a term as President of the United States. Contrary to today’s fashion, the crown of the hill was reserved, Maley explained, as a place honor for the Hoosier poet, with the grave of a United States President serving as his footstool.
From Harrison’s grave site, Maley led the tour group around the corner to the mausoleum of Carl Fisher, the lead partner of four automobile greats in the building of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. There is one empty crypt, but Fisher is not buried in it. Instead, his ashes are placed in a small bronze urn set atop a small bronze table. The empty slot was reserved for his ex-wife, Jane, who is buried in Florida. One crypt was used by British aviator Captain Joseph Joel Hammond. He was performing aerobatics over the Speedway in the spring of 1918 when he perished in a crash. Fisher was unable to send his body back to England because of the Great War, so had the fallen aviator laid to rest in his own crypt.
From the Fisher site the group travelled to the Crown Hill mausoleum where August and Gertrude Duesenberg are buried. “Augie” was the right hand man for his brother Fred. After Fred’s death in 1932, Augie continued to work, designing the supercharger for the 1937 Cord 812 S/C as well as building the Duesenberg SJ “Mormon Meteor,” the record setting salt flats race car that Ab Jenkins piloted to a number of speed records in 1935. Augie and his wife lived in Indianapolis from 1921 until his death many years after Fred’s untimely passing.
Leaving the mausoleum, an attempt was made to find some other gravesites, but without help from the cemetery, this proved futile in one case. In 2011, Maley and current region director Cliff Vogelsang had laid a wreath at Harry Stutz’s grave. Unfortunately, the exact tombstone could not be located. Maley explained to the group that the untimely death of Stutz was caused by an appendix that burst during a car trip back from Florida in 1930. By the time his wife drove him to Methodist Hospital from Beech Grove, it was already too late. Being a resident of Florida, he had made no provision to be buried in Indianapolis. A quick decision was made to bury him in a grave within his second wife’s family plot. The name “Stutz” is on one side of the monument, with his wife’s maiden name on the other. From the Stutz gravesite one last stop was made at the grave of Fred and Isle Duesenberg. Their only son, Denny, and his wife are buried on the backside of the tombstone. Upon the completion of the tour, the group headed over to the Indianapolis Museum of Art for a bite of lunch in the cafeteria.
Those on the morning tour included: Marsha Clapper; David and Allison Duesenberg, guests of the Maley’s; Stan Cuppy and his daughter Skylar and her boyfriend Dillon; Jo Davis; Larry and Louise Haskett; John and Diana Madden; George and B.J. Maley; Richard and Elizabeth Marshall; Dan Phenicie; Phil Schaefer; Jeff Shively; Tim Turner; Reverend Cliff Vogelsang; Mike Wright and Melanie Stallings. Later Paul and Patty Warrenfelt, along with their daughter Eva, joined the group for the afternoon tour.
Captions
1. Tour leader George Maley instructs CCCA members.
2. The magnificent entrance to Crown Hill Cemetery.
3. President Benjamin Harrison’s simple monument.
4. CCCA members pay respects to the Hoosier Poet.
5. George Maley tells a tale of Carl Fisher.
6. The Crown Hill Mausoleum .
7. George Maley at the gravesite of Fred Duesenberg.