By Carmen Shirkey

Verizon Central Newsroom Travel Editor

(Read previous columns.) 

Why is it that people who love to travel never seem to explore the tourist attractions in their own town?

I’m just as guilty as the next traveler of this sin. I lived just outside of our nation’s capital for a little over seven years, and only visited the city when I had guests that wanted me to play tour guide.

Now that I’m in a new city, I’m trying to change that. There are no Smithsonians, but there are other hidden jewels.

This summer, I braved a very hot, humid day for a walking tour amongst the graves of presidents and other well-regarded Virginia families – at Richmond, Virginia’s Hollywood Cemetery.

Despite its glamorous name, there’s very little relevance to movie stars. There are no names in lights, just names carved in stone. Some of those names are very famous.

James Monroe, the fifth president of the then relatively-new United States of America, is entombed here, his stone casket-shaped tomb surrounded by an iron cage. He died and was originally buried in New York, where his daughter lived and his financial misfortunes had forced him to move. Virginia wanted its native son back – and its new cemetery to prosper – so the body was exhumed and returned to rest in Hollywood Cemetery.

President John Tyler is also buried in Hollywood Cemetery, as well as another president – the president of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis. Davis’s grave features a statue of the only man to have held that office, along with graves and memorial statues dedicated to his family members.

Speaking of the Confederacy, the cemetery is also full of stones – both headstones and simple numbered stones – that mark the place of eternal rest for thousands of men who perished fighting the Civil War, along with a stone pyramid dedicated to all of those lost during that tumultuous time in American history.

And no cemetery would be complete – or as interesting – without a haunting story or two. One family’s remains had to be removed from their crypt following the story of the vampire that was chased into the tomb.

All this history was a mere 10-minute drive from my home, and would’ve been missed had I not been prompted by a photo in the newspaper. So while it’s not Rome, or Paris, or an island in the Caribbean, your own “backyard” can hold just as many new discoveries.