Tombstones

He keeps his tools in a torn sack -- a hammer, three chisels, a sponge. He works in the shade, bent, blowing away dust, writing names of the dead in marble. He's carved 1,000 of them, probably more; he stopped counting long ago. This was not his aspiration, but a dream changes along the way, and a man who starts out as a mechanic can end up carving gravestones. It happens. You find your craft, you take your pay.

Gail Teach skipped Thanksgiving with her daughter in Texas so she wouldn't miss her mother's birthday. She never missed her mother's birthday, not in life or in death. On Nov. 26, she headed to Riverside National Cemetery, as she does every year, to sit beside her parents' grave and quietly grieve. She brought a stuffed reindeer for her mom -- who would have been 81 -- and a small pumpkin and an American flag for her dad, a veteran. But when she reached the spot, something wasn't right.

I enjoyed Vani Rangachar's description of Pescadero ["A Beacon for Fans of Small-Town Life," Western Travel, Aug. 20]. She mentions visiting the cemetery set on a hillside overlooking the village. Yes, you can sense the town's history by reading the worn and sometimes heart-wrenching tombstones. Many bear the same September 1918 date of death. Evidently the town was hit with the flu pandemic of that year. I remember one poignant epitaph, which stated, "Here lies Baby Jane.

Vandals rampaged through a sprawling Jewish cemetery in Bucharest, toppling tombstones and smashing markers for as many as 200 graves. Jewish leaders said the scale of the destruction suggested the activity was organized. Other graves have been vandalized in Jewish cemeteries in recent years, but those attacks occurred in the provinces, and were more limited in scope. Romania's Justice Ministry promised an investigation. More than 40,000 Jews are buried in the cemetery in south Bucharest, including some victims of the Holocaust.

Utah has the country's highest suicide rate for males between the ages of 14 and 25. That grim statistic is given a name and a troubled family in Carol Lynn Pearson's impassioned "Facing East," now at the International City Theatre in Long Beach. This 80-minute agit-prop takes place at the fresh grave of Andy McCormick, the 24-year-old gay son of upstanding Mormons Ruth (Terry Davis) and Alex McCormick (Christian Lebano). A polite memorial service has just concluded -- during which no one mentioned that the deceased took his own life with a gun. Alex, devastated by the ceremony's hypocrisy, decides to hold a second funeral right there in the cemetery.

For three years, his painstaking work to preserve Civil War tombstones in a Santa Ana graveyard was lavished with praise -- from history buffs, veterans groups, cemetery officials and a congresswoman. But now, Gene-o Platt is watching in dismay as a squad of Boy Scouts prepares to undo his labor of love. Under orders from the Orange County Cemetery District, the marble headstones at Santa Ana Cemetery will soon be stripped back to their earlier state.

The tombstone of a black man who was dragged to his death was found broken with an obscenity and racial epithet carved into a metal plate on the bottom of the stone, police said. "We hoped he could rest in peace," said Stella Byrd, the mother of 1998 dragging victim James Byrd Jr. "They've done enough to him already." Two people at the Jasper City Cemetery tending to a relative's gravesite Thursday afternoon noticed the damage, police said.

Two white teenagers were charged in Jasper with desecrating the grave of James Byrd Jr., the black man dragged to his death from the back of a pickup truck in 1998. Joshua Lee Talley, 19, of Jasper and John Matthew Fowler, 18, of Call, were each charged with one criminal mischief charge related to the desecration. They were also charged with seven unrelated theft, burglary and mischief charges.

Cary Sharp is not a Disney zealot. Truth be told, he's been to Disneyland only once. But he acknowledged Thursday afternoon -- minutes after winning a $37,400 EBay charity auction to have his name and epitaph carved on a tombstone in the Anaheim park's Haunted Mansion attraction -- that reasonable minds might disagree. "I enjoy Disney; I'm not a Disney fanatic," said Sharp, a 37-year-old doctor and health care attorney from Baton Rouge, La. "Of course, this would raise questions now."

The family name of Hacking has been removed from the gravestone in Orem of a woman whose husband, Mark Hacking, has been charged with killing her and dumping her body in a trash bin. Lori Hacking's family changed the headstone, which now reads "Lori Kay Soares." Police found Hacking's body Oct. 1 at a landfill they had been searching since her disappearance in July.