Dead Poets Society founder wraps up tour, visits 500th grave
FREEPORT, Maine (AP) – A Maine man who travels the nation to document the final resting places of poets completed a summer tour in which he visited his 500th grave.
Dead Poets Society of America founder Walter Skold wrapped up Friday at the graves of Philip Pendleton Cooke in Millwood, Va., and Marianne Moore in Gettysburg. He visited his father’s grave in York. He’s heading back home to Freeport, Maine.
Most of his time was spent in the Deep South. He said he visited 97 graves over 70 days, bringing his total to 530.
He said he most remembered a memorial to four girls killed in a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., where he read Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham.”
The society’s name was partly inspired by the 1989 Robin Williams movie “Dead Poets Society.”