The Stranger in His Own Hometown
After four decades away, Walla Walla's city sexton finds that returning home is a bittersweet encounter with lost time.
The story, cleaned up
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City Sexton Bentley has returned from a brief visit to his old home in Minnesota and Michigan, fully impressed that time works wonders and that Walla Walla is the best town after all. 'It had been 44 years since I set eyes on the old home place, but I have no desire to return,' he declared. 'Out of the hundreds of friends and relatives I could find only four left and the old towns have so changed that I hardly recognized them. The trip was pleasant in some respects and sad in others—sad when one contemplates that the old-time friends have passed on.' Regarding his own professional life, Bentley remarked that after visiting 14 cemeteries during his travels, he declares that with one or two exceptions, Walla Walla has the finest cemetery of all seen.
“It had been 44 years since I set eyes on the old home place, but I have no desire to return.”
Bentley’s experience captures the specific melancholy of the western frontier—where the 'home' left behind in the Midwest became a ghost of the past while the new home in the Walla Walla Valley took root. His reflection on cemetery maintenance resonates with contemporary efforts to preserve local history, as even today, the care of our burial grounds remains a primary way we signal the value of a community's heritage.
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