New old stones rise in Riverside

By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Roxbury, Conn. fields between unquarried stones are muddy this day. Snow-limned shapes strike you. Scrape down to granite, call a crane, hoist one, circle it. Scrape off frozen leaves, earth and worms on its sides. Is this him? That her?
Gary Van Dis, after 30 years as creative director for Condé Nast, returned from New York to Saugatuck to spend time with his mother, near the end.
Jane (Bird) Van Dis (1921-2017) lived vividly. Educated here and in college — “She and my aunts were unusual then,” her son said — she married Bert Van Dis, son of Dutch farmers east of Saugatuck, raised five children, was 54 when Bert died and did not remarry.
She was active in Saugatuck Woman’s, Art, Doll and Writers clubs; the Historical Society, All Saints’ Episcopal Church and the Red Barn Theater; performed in the Saugatuck Village Players’ “A Christmas Carol” for 28 winters and long played Lady Liberty in July 4 parades, statuesque in green robes and foam-rubber tiara, holding her faux-torch high.
Jane painted, read, wrote, sewed; slept overnight in a cardboard box each year to raise funds for Allegan County’s homeless “well into her 80s,” Gary Van Dis said. In late years it grew harder to ride on truck platforms costumed in mid-day July 4 heat.
“It meant a lot to me spending time her then,” he said. “My family, like many in Saugatuck, prized curiosity, creativity and education. Summers guests from all over brought other kinds of creativity. Growing up here was like an incubator,” he said.
From his Brooklyn home, stone searcher Gary commuted to and from Manhattan publication offices. Green-Wood Cemetery four blocks away offered 478 acres of green respite dotted by carved stones under which Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Horace Greeley, Civil War generals and baseball legends lied. It hosts carriage rides and monthly picnics livened by Green-Wood’s peace.
Not far away was the artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) Studio Museum. He made 3D pieces: modern furniture for Holland’s Herman Miller Co. among others; stage sets for Martha Graham dance shows, lamps and basalt sculptures shaping what Van Dis sought.
Scotland’s standing stones found on fields inland from Great Britain’s craggy northern edge spoke to him.
So did Earthwood Studio head and “Stone Circles: A Modern Builders Guide to the Megalith Revival” author Rob Roy out Chateauguay, N.Y. way. At 76 he’s busy building mini-circles, spirals, mazes, serpents, pi symbols and such from stones found out walking. Pink syenite granite and muti-hued sandstone pieces fallen from a town truck sanding tarmac near his Mushwood Cottage are among his favorites.
“I like how the lady stone (wife?) is looking at her man,” Roy said of the “Van Dis Bird” family monument installed at Saugatuck’s Riverside Cemetery two weeks ago.
In its centerpiece, 3,000- and 5,000-pound granite slabs found across a Roxberry dirt road from each other perch facing vertically on a 15-ton Alacante Valencia pink marble base, shipped there years ago from Spain, also found nearby. It and a black granite foundation base are the work’s only quarried and polished stones.
That work was done four miles away in Bethlehem, Conn.; the base drilled with holes to accept stainless-steel rods implanted in the parent stones.
“Together, the foundation and base stones stand 36 inches high, a peaceful sitting height place for contemplation.” Gary said. Around stand what Roy, looking at a photograph. sees as “children stones,” also uncut granite.
In late April stones were hauled by tractor trailer from Bethlehem to Saugatuck Township landscape contractor Glenn Heavener’s 63rd Street Saugatuck Township land for storage/

Down by the Riverside
Saugatuck’s first known cemetery circa 1830 was an old Native American one on “the Flats” a level area on the hill’s foot near the village hall. By 1869 a decision was made there to have all cemetery graves removed, either by family or the authorities, to a better location. Most then went to Riverside, whose first burial, records show, had been five years earlier.
What for years was known as the Saugatuck Cemetery saw a movement in 1920, per a Commercial Record letter, proposing to change its name. “Riverside” was offered and adopted though it is not near the Kalamazoo River.
Remains of the first cemetery were excavated during construction. At the Saugatuck Centennial in 1930 a boulder with a bronze plaque “In Memory of the First Indian Burying Ground, 1800 to 1850” was dedicated, per Saugatuck History Center records. A few remains were buried in a mound nearby.

Assembly and Ascent
Wednesday after Memorial Day, the purchased plot across two-track Tulip Lane from what remains Riverside’s tallest stone, a Washington Monument-like shaft above which William Gay Butler (Sept. 28, 1799 – Sept. 11, 1857, Allegan County’s first settler) lies, was quiet again. “We didn’t want to disturb holiday remembrances,” Van Dis said. The site was graded and small support undertones set amid hardwood leaves fledging, pinecones budding.
The foundation and pink marble base were laid Friday and allowed to settle. Axman Enterprises crane man Bobby Brennan lowered the parent stones Saturday into base holes; Heavener’s crew secured pins into holes filled with wet epoxy to dry. “Children stones” went in Monday, Van Dis supervising, to complete the site.
“Van Dis Bird” are its only inscriptions,” he said. “It’s agnostic. A place you can feel peace and contemplate beyond.”