Walker Percy

This afternoon was the wedding in Covington, Louisiana, which is a middle sized city in Southeastern Louisiana, about twenty miles north of Lake Ponchatrain and the communities on the north shore. I drove Cindy, her Uncle Ray and her Aunt Joan to the sight of the wedding and then drove out to see if I could find the burial sight of one of my favorite authors, Walker Percy.

Walker Percy was born in Birmingham, Alabama to a Mississippi family. After his mother and father died he came home to Mississippi and lived with his bachelor uncle. Later, he matriculated at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and studied to be a surgeon. He was doing his residency at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City when he contracted tuberculosis. While he was in a sanatorium, he began reading the classics. Ultimately, he started writing a book. That book became "The Moviegoer" which won the National Book Award for fiction. After that, he quit medicine and became a writer.

Ultimately, he moved to Covington, Louisiana and converted to Catholicism. After a successful career as a writer, he died and was buried at Saint Joseph Abbey in Covington.

So before the wedding, I found myself walking among the graves behind the seminary. As I walked around among the gravestones, quiet and reserved in my grey suit and tie, I noticed what I took as a monsignor walking around in among the graves.

Rather than disturb his contemplations, I tried to look at the gravestones away from his walk. As if by direction, my attempt to avoid him led me to the gravestone of Walker Percy.

The gravestone was simple, just his name, date of birth and date of death. Nothing more. Pure humility.

I thought of this American Aristocrat, from a wealthy Mississippi family, educated in one of the finest state universities in the south, friend to one of the great historian/writers, Shelby Foote, and a great apologist for Christianity. Here was his simple gravestone. No epitaph. No Victorian sentiment. Just his name and the basic of basic facts of his life.

I suppose his work speaks for itself.