The Time I Visited Henrietta Lacks' Grave and Toured Her Childhood House before Baby Vultures Chased Me Away - Entrepreneur Generations

Last year, three teacher friends and I started a tradition of taking a summer road trip shortly after the school year ends. In 2016, it was upstate New York, as we traveled from Cooperstown to the Finger Lakes region to Niagara Falls. This year, as we all celebrated milestone birthdays (30, 40, 40, 50), we set ourselves on a longer trip: 8 days of travel towards the south, as we explored Charlottesville, Charlotte, Charleston, with nights in Raleigh and Williamsburg on the way back to Baltimore.

L-R: Elsie Lacks, Henrietta Lacks, Henrietta's mother Eliza Pleasant

As we were mapping out our journey this summer, I discovered that we had the opportunity to visit Henrietta Lacks' final resting place in between Charlottesville and Charlotte. I've been fascinated with her story for years, and, in general, like visiting the final resting spots of interesting people: Ms.Lacks, one of the most important figures in modern medicine, certainly qualifies (see more entries like this here).

Henrietta Lacks is buried in the small town of Clover, VA, in a small family cemetery. Even though she was recently (2010) given a headstone, I was unsure if the cemetery was open to the public, but Mrs. Courtney Speed, the Baltimore Henrietta Lacks advocate and Turner Station historian who I recently met as I explored Ms. Lacks' roots in Baltimore, assured me that it was open to the public. 

Lacks Town Road

The problem was, there was a dearth of information online. We know from Rebecca Skloot's book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that after Henrietta's mother's death in 1924, her father, Johnny Pleasant, spread the kids around to different relatives, and 4-year old Henrietta ended up with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks:

"Tommy lived in what everyone called the home-house -- a four-room log cabin that once served as slave quarters, with plank floors, gas lanterns, and water Henrietta hauled up a long hill from the creek. The home-house stood on a hillside where wind whipped through cracks in the walls. The air inside stayed so cool that when relatives died, the family kept their corpses in the front hallway for days so people could visit and pay respects. Then they buried them in the cemetery out back" (22).

Skloot spends some time in the book describing how she first came across Clover and Lacks Town here:

Lacks Town Family Cemetery

"Lacks Town [was] a single road about a mile long and lined with dozens of houses -- some painted bright yellows or greens, others unpainted, half caved-in or nearly burnt-down. Slave-era cabins sat next to cinderblock homes and trailers, some with satellite dishes and porch swings, others rusted and half-buried. I drove the length of Lacks Town Road again and again, past the END OF STATE MAINTENANCE sign where the road turned to gravel, past a tobacco field with a basketball court in it -- just a patch of red dirt and a bare hoop attached to the top of a weathered tree trunk.

The muffler on my beat-up black Honda had fallen off somewhere between Pittsburgh and Clover, which meant everyone in Lacks Town heard each time I passed. They walked onto porches and peered through windows as I drove by." (91)

Later, Skloot writes:

"End State Maintenance" sign

"About a half-mile down Lacks Town Road, Cliff (Henrietta's cousin) had me park in front of a cinder block and pressboard house that couldn't have been more than three hundred square feet inside. He jerked open a log-and-barbed-wire gate that led into a pasture and motioned for me to walk through. At the end of the pasture, hidden in the trees, stood a slave-time log cabin covered in boards with gaps wide enough to see through. Its windows had no glass and were covered by thin pieces of wood and rusted Coke signs from the fifties. The house slanted, its corners resting on piles of rocks of varying sizes that had been holding it above ground for more than two hundred years, its base high enough off the ground for a small child to crawl under.

"'That there is the old home-house where Henrietta grew up!' Cliff yelled, pointing. We walked toward it through red dirt and dried leaves that cracked under our feet, the air smelling of wild roses, pine, and cows.

"'Henrietta kept it nice--a real home-house. Now I can't hardly recognize it.'

Henrietta's childhood home

"The floors inside were covered with straw and manure; they'd collapsed in several places under the weight of cows that now roamed free on the property. Upstairs, in the room Henrietta once shared with Day, a few remnants of life lay scattered on the floor: a tattered work boot with metal eyes but no laces, a TrueAde soda bottle with a white and red label, a tiny woman's dress shoe with open toes..."

We took the information from Skloot's book and set our GPS from Charlottesville to Lacks Town, a 2-hour drive mostly on US-15 South, which took us through what seemed to be several hundred cornfields and a few interesting historical sites, most about the Civil War. Lacks Town is located in Clover, VA, a town so tiny that it became unincorporated in 1998 after being incorporated for the previous 103 years. Its 2010 census amounted to just 438 people.

"My uncle is buried right there." 

Two hours into our drive from Charlottesville, the GPS eventually took us off US-Route 360 and past the water tower, the abandoned elementary, and the still-functioning post office, winding towards Lack Town, which is simply a mile-long road. As we traveled down the road, we saw the same sort of motley assortment of homes and trailers that Skloot describes above. It was a quiet day in the middle of the week, and, during our first trek down the road, the only living thing we encountered were a couple of dogs who chased our car a bit and prompted us to roll up our windows. We continued to drive slowly, looking for the cemetery. Speckled among the homes where people were living were ramshackle cabins that looked to be well over 100 years old, uninhabitable and falling down. Were one of these the Lacks' "home-house" as described above? How could we tell? There was no signage.

Front room of Lacks "house home"

As we came to the end of the road, we saw the "End State Maintenance" sign that Skloot describes on page 91 of her book. We kept on going, ending up in someone's driveway before our driver completed a quick 3-point turn to get us out of there. As we began making our way back, we saw a small single-level house on the right with a few people outside, enjoying the unseasonably temperate weather. We decided to pull over and ask them for directions:

"Excuse me, we are four teachers from Baltimore who want to pay our respects to Henrietta Lacks' grave. Can you tell us where the Lacks Family Cemetery is?"

A man of around 35 smiled and told us he was a member of the Lacks family, and he pointed down the road and told us the cemetery was down there about a quarter of a mile. He said he'd figured we were looking for the cemetery the first time he saw us drive past. He then told his companions we probably didn't see it because the sign was down, and he proceeded to tell us to follow him.

Lacks Town Road.

He and a 12-year old boy jumped in a minivan and waited for us to turn back around. About a quarter of a mile back down the road, the minivan turned onto a two-track path into the woods. No cemetery was visible, but we trusted our guides, and likely would have never seen what looked like an overgrown driveway. The two-track path winded through the woods for a couple hundred yards, and while this was happening, we were wondering about our life decisions: should we be following a stranger into dense woods?


Soon ahead of us, though, a clearing emerged, and we saw the cemetery. A chicken-wire fence guarded it, and it could have used a good mowing, but it was undeniably peaceful: blackberries grew along the sides, tall trees towered over us, wildflowers were everywhere, and our soundtrack was simply the sound of insects in the woods.

The rusted Coke sign Skloot writes about.

Mr. Lacks -- and I totally forgot his first name, sorry, but he said he was a cousin -- showed us around the cemetery, pointing us towards Henrietta's grave. She's buried next to her mother, Eliza Lacks Pleasant (1886-1924) and her daughter Elsie (1939-1955), Henrietta's second child who was developmentally disabled and institutionalized at Crownsville Hospital Center (called then "Hospital for the Negro Insane").

Henrietta Lacks' headstone was only placed there in 2010, and it is beautiful. Shaped like a book, it reads "Henrietta Lacks August 01, 1920 - October 04, 1951. In loving memory of a phenomenal woman, wife and mother who touched the lives of many. Here lies Henrietta Lacks (HeLa). Her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever. Eternal Love and Admiration, From Your Family". Her daughter Lucile Elsie Lacks' grave is also new, and is simpler, with a set of praying hands and the inscription "Gone But Not Forgotten." Elsie's story is especially tragic, as she died in "Negro Insane" asylum without having a visitor after Henrietta died. In the book, Skloot's writes about Deborah discovering photos of Elsie from her autopsy that showed undeniable abuse at the hands of the hospital.

A farther shot of Elsie's, Henrietta's, and Eliza's headstones

Mr. Lacks pointed us to the spot where his father was buried; it was marked by a small card, and he said he was saving up to buy him a headstone. The 12-year old boy was a cousin, and he lived in the Bronx, but was spending the summer with his relatives down there in the south. He took me around a bit, pointing out an uncle who had been murdered in the 1990s, and a great aunt who had recently died. He told me he did a project on Henrietta Lacks during this past school year, reading the book and giving a presentation to his class and being able to tell everyone that Henrietta was his second cousin. Frankly, he was an awesome kid.

Lacks Family Cemetery was peaceful and overgrown

We soaked in the sites, and then Mr. Lacks took us back down the two-track and pointed us through a patch of fairly dense woods and told us, "Her house is right through there." We looked, and we noted a small, two-level wooden house through the trees.

The Lacks home.

I've been battling poison ivy all summer, mostly from my yard, but I didn't hesitate in pulling back some bramble and stepping over some logs to get a closer view. There was something so powerful and eerie about the experience of seeing the house alone (no one else, at this point, wanted to risk getting pricked by plants) and thinking about some of Skloot's descriptions of Henrietta looking out through her window at the cemetery, which was about 100 feet away. The house was dilapidated, but there was a strength to it too: trees grew into its frame and walls, yet stood formidably, more than 150 years after being built. I took a bunch of photos and came back out to our group.

Mr. Lacks then took us back to the cemetery, and saw there was a clearer path to the house from there. He led myself, my friend and colleague Patty, and the 12-year old boy through high grasses and less-dense woods to the back of the house. We stepped gingerly through the meadow, watching for snakes and holes.

Mr. Lacks leading us to a better view of the house.

As we arrived, Mr. Lacks told us that, as children, they used to play in the house, which had not been habitable for decades. He took us inside, telling us to be careful where to step and to be on the lookout for snakes. The house had almost completely taken over by nature, but, as we walked through, Mr. Lacks pointed out the kitchen, the front door, the back door, and the living room. The house was beaten down by weather and the elements and smelled like livestock. I thought about Skloot's description above, how the family used to lay the corpses of family members in the front room because it remained so cool. That, and the quiet, contributed to the spookiness of the place; I can imagine that, as children, it would have been an almost mystical place to play in.

Lacks house selfie.

As I was walking through the kitchen, past the front and back doors, I entered that front room area. I surveyed the room to the right first, and, then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw two ghostly little white beings shuffling towards me. My initial thought was that it was literally ghosts, that we were awakening the spirits of the Lacks family as we explored their history. Then, I thought maybe the figures were animals that could come charging at me -- Skloot wrote that cows trampled through the "home-house," so I thought it could be a hog or something like that. But as I immediately wheeled around and out of there, I glanced back once more to recognize what I saw as awkward birds the size of chickens: baby vultures. I don't think baby vultures are dangerous, but I didn't want an angry mother vulture to be fending me off. I hightailed it out of there, now knowing that Henrietta Lacks' childhood house has so been taken over by nature that vultures are nesting in it.

Here's a not-great video of me walking through the house, getting the tour from Mr. Lacks, until getting spooked by the baby vultures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP6viNy9VgQ.

Located at US Route 360 and Clover Road.

Mr. Lacks led us back to the cemetery, but not before I took one more lap around the house, soaking in the sites: the tin Coca-Cola sign that Skloot wrote about, the glassless windows, the weathered wood and blocks. We chatted a bit more with Mr. Lacks, thanking him profusely and giving him some money for his father's headstone that he was saving up for.

It was a powerful experience, one that I'll remember forever. Henrietta Lacks continues to contribute to humanity decades after her death, and the more she is recognized for her unwitting contributions, the more we recognize all of which binds us together with history, science, and other people decades, states, and countries away from us.

On our way out of town, we stopped by the Henrietta Lacks Historical Marker, near the corner US Route 360 and Clover Road.

This is Oprah's rendition of Henrietta's childhood home in the recent HBO movie. Not bad, I say.

This is a representation of the actual baby vultures who came charging after me inside Henrietta Lacks' home.

Another shot of Henrietta Lacks' grave

Blackberries growing at the Lacks Family Cemetery.

"Henrietta's sister Gladys never forgave her for moving to Baltimore and leaving their father behind for Gladys to care for as he aged. The way Gladys saw it, that cancer was the Lord's way of punishing Henrietta for leaving home." Here are the headstones for Henrietta's sister Gladys Lacks (1919-2004), Gladys's husband Waverly Lacks (1917-2001), and their son Rev. Gary Lacks (1950-2002). Rev. Lacks is also featured briefly in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as he attempted to perform faith healing on Deborah.

A ramshackle house in Clover.

Close-up of highway marker.

Clover post-office.

Clover's defunct elementary school.

Lacks' "house-home"

Inside the Lacks home.

Note the blocks the Lacks house sits upon.

The Lacks house through the trees.

Beauty of Lacks Town Road.

This leaning Antebellum-era house was beyond the "End State Maintenance" sign.

John Randall Pleasant II (1920-1982) was Henrietta's brother. 

Henrietta Lacks' mother, Eliza Pleasant (1880-1924).

Clover, VA.

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2v82FvY The Time I Visited Henrietta Lacks' Grave and Toured Her Childhood House before Baby Vultures Chased Me Away - Entrepreneur Generations

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