Famous People Buried at Oakdale Cemetery

Famous People Buried at Oakdale Cemetery

David Brinkely

Birth: Jul. 10, 1920
Wilmington
New Hanover County
North Carolina, USADeath: Jun. 12, 2003
Houston
Harris County
Texas, USA
Television Personality/Newscaster. Brinkley was born on July 18, 1920, in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was a main fixture on television for over 50 years including on NBC and ABC, beginning his career as a broadcaster in the 1940s. Appearing as a co-anchor with Chet Huntley on the news program, "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" from 1956 to 1970, and "This Week With David Brinkley" from 1982 until he retired in 1997. In 1992 he won the George Foster Peabody Award for his report on the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, during World War II. He also appeared as a narrator on the 1961 film, "The Challenge of Ideas" and as himself in an episode of, "The Jack Benny Program" on September 25, 1964. He was well-known to television audiences as a news analyst for his terse, biting comments and dry wit. He was also the recipient of two more George Foster Peabody Awards, 10 Emmy Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. In 1995 he wrote his memoirs, "11 Presidents, 4 Wars, 22 Political Conventions, 1 Moon Landing, 3 Assassinations, 2,000 Weeks Of News, and Other Stuff On Television." He retired from broadcasting in 1997. He died June 11, 2003, at the age of 82, after a fall at his home in Houston, Texas. (bio by: K)

Family links:
 Parents:
  William Graham Brinkley (1875 - 1928)
  Mary West Brinkley (1879 - 1966)


Search Amazon for David Brinkley Burial:
Oakdale Cemetery
Wilmington
New Hanover County
North Carolina, USA
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Jun 12, 2003
Find A Grave Memorial# 7567008

John Dillard Bellamy

Birth: Mar. 24, 1854
Wilmington
New Hanover County
North Carolina, USADeath: Sep. 25, 1942
Wilmington
New Hanover County
North Carolina, USA
US Congressman. Bellamy was a member of the North Carolina State senate from 1900 to 1902. He served as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina from 1899 to 1903. (bio by: Evening Blues)

Family links:
 Spouse:
  Emma May Hargrove Bellamy (1857 - 1944)*

 Children:
  Eliza M Bellamy Williamson (1877 - 1969)*

*Calculated relationship


Search Amazon for John Bellamy Burial:
Oakdale Cemetery
Wilmington
New Hanover County
North Carolina, USA
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Originally Created by: Evening Blues
Record added: Nov 07, 2003
Find A Grave Memorial# 8067171

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Henry Bacon

Henry Bacon

Henry Bacon was the architect for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and the Bellamy Mansion on Market and 5^th Ave in Wilmington.  He is buried in Oak Dale Cemetery

Source: A Pictorial History of Wilmington by Anne Russell

Henry Bacon, Jr. (Nov. 28, 1866-Feb. 16, 1924), best known as the architect of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C., spent much of his youth in Wilmington, North Carolina, and he designed some notable buildings in the state as a result. The friendships he made in Wilmington as a youth led to several commissions in Wilmington and Linville, a mountain resort established by Wilmingtonians. In contrast to his predominantly classical designs for which he is generally recognized, his little-known North Carolina work displayed his artistic approach to an informal, rustic architecture suited to coastal and mountain settings.

Henry Bacon, Jr., was born in Watseka, Illinois, one of seven children of Henry (1822-1891) and Elizabeth Kelton (1831-1912) Bacon of Massachusetts. In the 1870s Henry, Sr., a civil engineer, moved the family to the Wilmington area. He had been assigned to the Wilmington office of the United States Engineer Department to take charge of construction of the great New Inlet Dam and Swash Defense Dam near the mouth of the Cape Fear River, a major engineering feat (see Bishir and Southern, A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Eastern North Carolina). The family lived in Southport from 1876 to 1880 and moved to Wilmington in 1880.
After graduating from Wilmington's Tileston School in 1884, Henry Bacon, Jr., attended architectural school at the University of Illinois for a year, worked in a Boston architectural office, and then moved to the prestigious New York firm of McKim, Mead and White. He was involved with that firm in planning for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Subsequently, in partnership with the noted architect James Brite and then on his own, Bacon gained widespread respect and many honors as an architect in the Beaux-Arts tradition. His Lincoln Memorial (1912-1922), for which he won the prestigious Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects, was by far the most famous of his works, which included important campuses, public buildings, and, in keeping with Beaux-Arts principles, memorials in collaboration with premier sculptors of the day.
Bacon maintained contact with family and friends in Wilmington, including his sister Kate Bacon McKoy. (He suggested a design for a house in Wilmington for Kate and her husband, but the couple chose another plan, which was built by local architect-builder James F. Post.) Although his oeuvre tended toward monumental classical designs, for friends from Wilmington he planned buildings in more informal styles. He designed the Donald MacRae House (1902) in Wilmington in a picturesque Queen Anne-Shingle style. Beyond the city beside the sound, he designed Live Oaks (1913), an octagonal villa for Walter and Agnes MacRae Parsley, wherein he employed a local shell-rock material.

When the Wilmington MacRae family and others developed the mountain resort village of Linville, Bacon designed some of its earliest buildings in an elegant rustic mode suited to the mountain setting. Using the abundant local chestnut bark and natural branches in artful fashion, he planned All Saints Episcopal Church (1910-1913), for which Agnes MacRae Parsley of Wilmington was a major donor. He also designed at least three cottages in similar style. His use of natural chestnut shingles and sheathing inside and out set a local pattern for the distinctive resort community, a mode that continued until the chestnut blight wiped out the great trees.
Bacon also designed two notable memorials in North Carolina: the Women of the Confederacy Monument (1913) on Union Square in Raleigh, with sculptor Augustus Lukeman; and the Gabriel James Boney Confederate Monument (1924) in Wilmington, completed after his death, with sculptor Francis H. Packer. At his death in 1923, Bacon was buried in the family plot in Wilmington's Oakdale Cemetery; his marker was designed after a classical drawing found on his desk. Although not often recognized in larger studies of Bacon and his contemporaries, for Bacon his Wilmington-related friendships and projects were an important part of his oeuvre and his life. A state highway historical marker in Wilmington, one of the few (possibly the only one) in the state memorializing an architect, recognizes his presence and work in the city.

Author: Leslie N. Boney, Jr. Update: Catherine W. Bishir.

Published 2009

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ARTHUR BLUETHENTHAL

Born November 1, 1891, in Wilmington, North Carolina. Son of Leopold and Johanna Bluethenthal. Educated Phillips Academy, Exeter, and Princeton University, Class of 1913. Business, Tobacco Products Corporation, New York. Joined American Field Service, May 6, 1916; attached Section Three, France and Balkans, until May 11, 1917. Croix de Guerre for conspicuous bravery around Verdun. Enlisted French Aviation, June 7, 1917. Trained Avord and Pau. Breveted September 22, 1917. Leave in America. Attached observation groupe,Sergent. Killed in combat over the lines, near Maignelay, June 5, 1918, region of Amiens. Croix de Guerre with palm. Buried Esquennoy, Oise, north of Breteuil. Body transferred to Wilmington, North Carolina. Escadrille Bréguet 227, March 17, 1918,

WHEN Arthur Bluethenthal joined the Field Service in May, 1916, he could not sign up for the full six months because he had a contract to coach the Princeton football team that fall. So it was arranged with the French authorities to reduce slightly in his case the period of enlistment. But, when the time came for him to return to America, it was his own deliberate choice to obtain a release from his engagements at home and to continue the career which was to lead, from honor to honor and without one regret or looking back, to his death, two years later, in aerial combat above the German lines.
In the fall of 1916 the Field Service was expanding rapidly and "Bluie," as we called him, had come to the fore as a leader. He was the sort of man to whom others instinctively looked for guidance and the sort of man who radiated a spirit of ready and cheerful co-operation, qualities which were of great value, when every liner brought scores of new and undisciplined recruits from America and when the Service was extending its work to Northern Greece and Albania.
"My life does not belong to me now," he wrote on one occasion to a friend in America. "It belongs to France, to the Allies, to the cause to which I have pledged it. And, if I should never come back, I do not want you to feel badly. I am glad I have had a chance to live in times like these and to do my bit for the future of the world. . . . . At home it was a holiday all the time. Here it is the stern facts of life and death. And it is hard to explain the way we feel about it all, especially about France, we who have volunteered to fight for her."
When America entered the war, "Bluie" was serving with Section Three in the Balkans. Returning with his Section to France in May, 1917, he enlisted at once in the Foreign Legion, from which he was transferred to the Air Service. He received his preliminary training at Avord and later instruction at Pau.
After a four weeks' leave, which he spent with his parents in Wilmington, North Carolina, he joined an observation group at the front. In this work he at once made his mark. "You remember," wrote a friend, "Bluie's easy-going, complacent confidence in football days? Well, it is still a part of him when we fly over the German lines. He gets in his plane and goes up and does his work just as calmly as he sits down to breakfast. That sort of nerve helps us all, the old flyers as well as the new."
Towards the end of May, 1918, he was transferred from the French service to the American Naval Aviation. But he refused to leave his comrades while they were engaged in the desperate aerial fighting, which marked the second of the great German drives in 1918. This gallant act was recorded in official dispatches and endeared him to his comrades in a way that only an airman who has flown at the front through an attack can fully appreciate. It was a fateful decision for "Bluie," for his life ended in this battle. He was killed "while directing distant artillery fire" on June 5th and buried with all military honors by his comrades in the cemetery at Esquennoy, near Breteuil, in the Amiens sector."
He was cited posthumously in Army orders. A palm was also added to his Croix de Guerre. And, when news of his death reached Wilmington, where a host of friends had followed his career with increasing pride since first he went away to college, all business houses closed for an hour, all flags were flown at half mast, and a very impressive memorial service was held by the citizens in the Opera House.

"Let us pause a moment," read the proclamation of the mayor, "and do honor to one who has died for us, died in the full strength of young manhood, died in the conflict of battle, and dying has emphasized the creed of the soldier --- better a grave in France than citizenship in a dishonored country." http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/AFShist/Mem4.htm

The Jewish Cemetery

Temple of Israel 1875

Fourth and Market Street

Jewish Cemetery at Oakdale Cemetery

The Temple of Israel congregation was made up of German Jews who had immigrated to Wilmington around 1840 and had become well established in the city.  Families associated with the Temple include the Bluehtentals, the Dammenhaums, the Jacobs, and the Bears.  The Jewish Reform cemetery is a part of the Oakdale cemetery and is encircled with a fence ornamented with a Star of David.

Source: A Pictorial History of Wilmington by Anne Russell 

Book available at Two Sister Bookery At the Cotton Exchange.