Wade Van Dore Headstone. Available from Private Party. $5,500.
The following is the verbiage and names on the stone.
Top to bottom.
LIFE KILLS
Wade Van Dore
1899-198_
Author of the
Declaration of Dependence
on nature, signed, acclaimed
or recognized by
Richard Eberhart
Buckminster Fuller
Aaron Copeland
Linus Pauling
Steve Allen
Julie Harris
Leonard Bernstein
Alister Cooke
E. B. White
Joyce Carol Oates
Margaret Meade
Roger Tory Peterson
Jamie Wyeth
Ansel Adams
George Wald
Howard Moss
Edwin Way Teale
Eugene McCarthy
B. F. Skinner
Rudolph Steiner
Andrew Watts
John Cage
Elliot Porter
Norman Rockwell
Richard Wills
John Gardner
Death Cures All Ills.
Mr. Van Dore was a lifelong friend of Robert Frost. He died in 1989. And was interned here in St. Petersburg, Florida. The headstone he had made was never put at his grave site, due to restrictions by the cemetery. And is for sale.
It measures 22" x 58" x 2 1/4".
Top Inscriptions
Bottom Inscriptions
Though Wade Van Dore probably would have preferred to be remembered as an environmentalist, his long friendship with Robert Frost ensured his fame. Wade's last work was a book titled "The Life of the Hired Man", an autobiography which describes his life and friendship/mentorship with Frost.
Frost was a writing instructor at Amhert College when Wade enrolled in 1917. Frost impressed enough with Wade to help publish a volume of his poem. They became lifelong friends, and in 1929 Wade helped renovate the 153-acre farm in Sftsbury, Vermont, known as The Gully. In the Depression years, Robert invited Wade and his family to live there. They shared a passion for all things natural and living.
When Wade moved to Clearwater, he met Tom and joined the poetry readings at Beaux Arts. Wade judged many of the poetry competitions at Beaux Arts and was honored at the 39th annual competition.
Wade was one of Tom's closest friends. They shared many passions - a love of life, cats, poetry, and a genuine concern about nature and the environment. It was this love of nature and that drove them to sound the alarm over our fragile eco system decades before Al Gore made his movie about the threat of global warming. They would no doubt be pleased to see their ideas being espoused daily by the media in 2008.
Wade wrote his own versions of the "Declaration of Dependence", which Tom kept around in duplicate. He famously designed his own tombstone (seen above), which he left with Tom. When Wade passed away in Clearwater, Florida in April, 1989, Tom had the gravestone (pictured above) placed in the Reese family plot. Source: http://www.beauxartsbook.com/Writers/Wade.html
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Antique Galleries of St. Pete
450 34th Street N. (US Hwy 19)
St. Petersburg, Florida 33713
727 321-3331
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