A Pandemic by Any Other Name

Walker Ray (Corky) my wife Pat and I made a drive down to Eastern Oklahoma some years ago. Our destination was Maxie Cemetery, about a mile off US- 270 a few miles this side of Wister, Oklahoma. We went there to place some new gravestones — the main one marking our grandfather George Washington Boyd’s grave. He was my mom’s dad and he died young in the great pandemic of 1918. May 17 of 1918 to be exact. There was the grave of my great Uncle there too and his was illegible too. So we replaced his too. His name was Mike Boyd. The old sandstones had faded away so bad you could not read the hand chiseled names and dates on them. Corky believed, as did I that families should see to things like this. Neglected graves can become “lost.”