LEONORA LaPETER, St. Petersburg TimesGLENDALE - Robert Pridgen lay in the vegetable cooler, in a poplar box cut from nearby trees. Lung cancer had taken him the day before. He was 48.
His siblings and friends lifted the box from the cooler and slid it onto the tailgate of his best friend’s pickup.
They drove him over a winding road that was barely a road, past 200-year-old longleaf pines and cypress trees and fields of chufa seed and velvet bean to a hole in a field of grass. To support the box, someone found some fence posts nearby and placed them over the hole.
A pastor said a few words and Pridgen’s family lowered the casket. On top of it, they put his well-used Bible, his favorite orange ski cap and some red roses.
Pridgen’s brother shoveled clumps of dirt, smiling at the memory of how he and Pridgen used to lob dirt clods at each other when they were kids. “I got to throw the last dirt clod,” he joked.
Farmers John and William Wilkerson stood back, letting Pridgen’s family and friends handle the first burial on their land.
Well Robert, I’m sorry you left us, John Wilkerson thought, but thank you for choosing this place, for helping us with our cause.
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John Wilkerson learned to count riding in his father’s ‘53 Chevrolet sedan by tallying the number of homes between his parents’ farm and DeFuniak Springs, 9.4 miles away.
He never used all his fingers.
Today, “I can’t pull off the road and take a pee, I’m in somebody’s yard,” he said.
Land values are escalating here, in the forests between Tallahassee and Pensacola. The St. Joe Co. is developing upscale communities on the south end of Walton County.
The Wilkerson brothers worried that they eventually might lose the farm they’ve had in their family for almost 60 years.
C.O. and Laura Wilkerson paid $15 an acre in 1946. They farmed soybeans, peanuts and corn until those crops became unprofitable in the early 1970s. The family turned to producing a specialized crop called chufa, a nut-like seed that wild turkeys eat and turkey hunting preserves need.
Before their parents died, the brothers promised them they would never sell the 350-acre family farm.
Lately they worried about keeping that promise. They were getting into their 50s. John had no children and William’s stepson suggested putting in a mobile home park. Or maybe the county would take their property for the taxes and sell to developers.
The Wilkersons offered to donate their land to a conservation group, if it would be preserved. The conservation group said they likely would end up selling the farm to buy better land elsewhere.
A few years ago, they heard about a doctor in South Carolina who had created a nature preserve by burying bodies on it. The doctor called them “green burials.” No embalming. No headstone. No vault. Just people rolled in a blanket or put in a pine box and covered with dirt.
The doctor used the money he charged for the burials to restore the property and pay the taxes. The bodies prevented future development.
The Wilkersons thought: eureka.
* * *
Billy Campbell is the only medical doctor in Westminster, S.C., population 3,400, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
An avid environmentalist, he came up with the idea to use burials to preserve land. For centuries, folks have wrapped up their dead and buried them in the back yard. In England, no-frills “natural” burials have become popular, with some 200 sites either in use or planned.
Campbell took the idea a step further. What if the natural burials on just a portion of land could preserve an undeveloped, larger chunk forever?
In 1996, Campbell and his wife bought 33 acres along a creek and offered “green burials.” Folks in Westminster resisted the idea at first, worried that his unorthodox burial ground might affect the nearby creek.
Only 18 people were buried there in six years. But seven were buried in just the last month, after Campbell’s preserve was featured in an article in The American Association of Retired Persons Bulletin.
Now Campbell has joined with Tyler Cassity, a consultant on HBO’s Six Feet Under and owner of celebrity cemetery Hollywood Forever, where film director John Huston, Hollywood mobster Bugsy Siegel and Rudolph Valentino are buried.
They want to bring Campbell’s concept to areas from Florida to Texas, Colorado, Washington and Illinois. Their goal: preserve 1-million acres over the next 30 years.
Last month they closed on a 32-acre parcel beneath the Golden Gate Bridge; some 500 people have signed up on a waiting list.
Campbell, 48, said they received so much interest from folks in Florida after the AARP article, they are looking at land near the Hillsborough River for a cemetery/nature preserve. But first, there was a farm to protect in the Florida Panhandle.
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A year-and-a-half ago, John and William Wilkerson signed away the rights to their farm. They’re on the board of trustees that now owns and operates it as a cemetery/nature preserve. Campbell, the doctor, is on the board, as is a soil scientist from the University of Florida.
The Wilkersons have had two burials on their property, Pridgen and a woman from nearby Niceville.
Idell Cummings, sister of Robert Pridgen, said money ($1,000 complete) was a factor in burying her brother at the Glendale Memorial Nature Preserve, but the property also just seemed right for him.
“He was always out roaming in the woods,” Cummings said. She also plans to be buried on the Wilkerson farm, along with her mother and possibly a sister.
The Wilkersons are forbidden from selling plots to Cummings and family in advance; the state wanted a $50,000 deposit for the brothers to sell plots preneed. The state requires the deposit to help ward off fly-by-night operations, so taxpayers don’t get stuck maintaining cemeteries that go bankrupt.
The brothers instead got a designation that allows them to sell services for opening and closing graves as needed. You can mark the spot you want with a stake.
Greg Brudnicki, operator of three cemeteries in Panama City and chairman of the state cemetery and funeral board, considers the green cemetery concept alien. What if someone stepped on a grave without an underground vault and broke his leg? Who does he sue?
“I don’t understand their reason for doing it,” he said. “There’s not been an outcry from the public. I don’t know who wants it. Nobody has come to us and said, “Gee, we want a green cemetery.’ Nobody has come in and lobbied for it. It’s a nonexistent issue. I don’t know why he wants to do it.
“He’s talking about not embalming the body? You’d not be able to view the body without embalming. I don’t understand the reasoning behind wanting to do it.”
The reason, the Wilkersons say, is to keep their promise to their parents.
“We worried we might die and it would not have gotten done,” William said.
They’ve kept the right to live on the farm the rest of their lives. Just 70 of the 350 acres will be used for burials. For now (they did not experience damage by Hurricane Ivan), the rest will stay as it has.
A pair of U.S. missile nose cones straddle the farm entrance. John recycled them from a military surplus “fire sale.”
“How often per lifetime do you get the chance to buy two nuclear missile nose cones for $75?” John asked. “You taxpayers are still paying for those suckers.”
John lives in the house he built from cypress, poplar and pine that grew on the farm. It has indoor plumbing and an outhouse out front. His bachelor’s degree (in agriculture) from the University of Florida hangs in the outhouse. Nearby sits a pile of colorful bowling balls, waiting to be plopped in the front yard when the massive pecan tree sheds its nuts, so that people won’t pull up and crush them.
His chufa operation produced 30 tons of the seed last year, worth $20,000. He still operates a tiny sawmill he recycled from some other auction.
On the sawmill’s work table is the beginnings of a pet casket, about the size of a small suitcase. It’s a prototype of sorts for a lady in Fort Walton Beach who owns a pet crematory and wants to start doing business.
A half dozen simple caskets, some with carved crosses on the front, hang from the wall. Sawdust covers everything. Pulleys, drills, vices and cans of nails share space with piles of shredded poplar and logs of pine.
“This is the casket La-Z-boy showcase,” John said, outstretching an arm.
John is 56. He already has crafted the coffin he will be buried in. The poplar box stands in his bathroom, complete with shelves for his towels, jeans, socks, shoes and shirts. For now, it’s his closet.
Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.