A while back I had the occasion of standing in front of former Oregon Governor Tom McCall’s grave in the Redmond Memorial Cemetery. I had always wanted to visit the site of this legendary figure’s final resting place, and, finally, here I was, on a bright sunny morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first I was a bit underwhelmed. I expected something much grander, opulent for the greatest governor in Oregon history. I mean, there was no headstone!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His was a simple slab of marble with his beloved wife Audrey next to him. It read \u201cGovernor of Oregon,\u201d and it also read \u201cHe cared.\u201d A two-word epitaph from a master wordsmith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He cared<\/em>. That was it. I thought about that sentence. It doesn’t say he cared for this or that. He just cared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because Tom McCall cared for Oregon, and not in an abstract or ideological way, my life was immeasurably improved and keeps improving every time I visit one of Oregon’s public beaches for free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where are we today Oregonians?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It didn’t occur me to bring along a flower or swag of Oregon grape to leave behind on the grave. That was wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I left, I wondered how many people visit this grave a year? Does anyone send flowers to it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A while back I had the occasion of standing in front of former Oregon Governor Tom McCall’s grave in the Redmond Memorial Cemetery. I had always wanted to visit the site of this legendary figure’s final resting place, and, finally, here I was, on a bright sunny morning. At first I was a bit underwhelmed. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,74],"tags":[1093,54],"class_list":["post-6071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-coast_history","tag-grave","tag-tom-mccall","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6074,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071\/revisions\/6074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}