- You know, I enjoy nearby Acadia National Park with its hikes and its tourists and its buses.

But even more, I've come to love Bangor, Maine's many neighborhoods and many parks.

What could be more fun than hiking up Cemetery Hill or just plane strolling through the acres upon acres of Mount Hope Cemetery?

After all, you meet so many interesting people, most of who are dead.

(upbeat music) I stand where Stephen King played a minister in the movie "Pet Sematary," steps from Carrie's grave.

Coincidence?

Only Stephen King knows for sure.

Herman Munster, AKA Fred Gwynne, played one of his last roles here in that movie.

Across Mount Hope Avenue, you'll see the name Flagg, two Gs, inspiration for "The Stand"'s wicked Randall Flagg.

"Pet Sematary" came out 35 years ago, but Mount Hope Cemetery goes back much further.

(upbeat music) As a boy, Peter Edes, son of a newspaper man, saw revolutionaries disguise themselves for the Boston Tea Party in his father's home.

Later, redcoats jailed 18-year-old Edes after the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Of 30 fellow prisoners, Edes was one of 11 released alive.

Later, starting Bangor's first newspaper, this patriot didn't get rich in Bangor, but many did.

(upbeat music) Today, big money calls to mind tech, oil, weapons.

In the early 1800s, big money sprang from granite, brick, and lumber.

Bangor was a hub for all three, especially lumber, but Fan Jones was a distinctive entrepreneur.

A cemetery evoked sky blue pleasure in heaven above, but Fan Jones advertised her "Sky Blue House of Pleasure" right here in Bangor, much appreciated by thousands of lumberjacks returning from cold winters in the Maine woods.

In 1890, Bangor had 142 saloons, but one sky blue house of pleasure.

Jones hired only women, not girls, dressing her workers in finest Paris couture, their charms displayed in her booth at the Bangor State Fair.

Wealthy families who'd hired architect Charles Bryant to create America's second garden cemetery sought a city park featuring classy headstones in a beautiful hilly wood.

Fan Jones was unwelcome in Mount Hope's prestigious ground, but Fan had an ace up her garter, buying a family plot in the name of her common-law husband, John Thomas, a plot she populated with her employees, their children, and herself when her time came after her career catering to lumberjacks, Union soldiers, and others in need.

(upbeat music) Bangor did more than its share for the Union.

When the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed, permitting slavery spread west, Bangor Congressman Israel Washburn gathered anti-slavery politicians at the office of Representative Dickinson.

His daughter, Emily, was a darn good poet.

Afterwards, in a June 2, 1854, Bangor speech, Washburn, as war clouds gathered, was likely the first federal politician to use the term "Republican Party."

(upbeat music) U.S.

Army Brigadier General David Twiggs was a traitor.

In 1861, General Twiggs, then in Texas, ordered his men to surrender to Confederates.

Many obeyed.

Stephen Carpenter of Maine disobeyed, breaking away, leading troops east, fighting for the Union.

Carpenter was killed in action that December.

Using new embalming technology, his men shipped Carpenter to Bangor.

Inspired, Bangor people created what may be the first community-built Union Army Memorial during the Civil War.

A huge crowd joined the dedication July 4, 1864, bullet ridden battle flags fluttering.

And so, one of America's oldest Civil War monuments stands near one of the most recent Civil War monuments.

Bangor's 2nd Maine fought in 10 bloody battles.

Only a third made it home to muster out, but some had inadvertently signed up for three years, not the standard two, so were transferred by force to Joshua Chamberlain's command at Gettysburg.

Chamberlain grew up in the Bangor area, attended Bangor Theological Seminary.

A professor, Chamberlain knew seven languages.

Chamberlain had authority to treat the 2nd Maine's resistant veterans like prisoners.

Instead, Chamberlain spoke in plain English from the heart about the cause of freedom.

The vast majority chose to risk their lives once again under his command.

Out of ammo at Little Round Top, Chamberlain rallied Maine men to bayonet charge the arms Confederates, winning what many say was the pivotal skirmish of the most pivotal battle of the Civil War.

Per capita, Maine lost among the most of any Union state, many of whom were Bangor's 2nd Maine volunteers.

The 2nd Maine's Luther Peirce survived and made money, creating a trust that a century later funded one of America's most recent Civil War memorials, completed in 1963.

Luther's relative, Waldo Peirce, helped select the monument, which embodies the tremendous pain and exalted justice of our Union cause.

In the early 1900s, an additional fort-style memorial was created featuring naval cannons.

Nearby, elderly Union Army veterans were laid to rest as they passed on.

(upbeat music) Hannibal Hamlin saw no action in the Civil War.

Hamlin was a lowly company cook, yet his service is so respected for being so humble.

Given that Hamlin was called to military service when he was, well, Lincoln's vice president, Vice President Hamlin of Bangor, as company cook, set an inspiring example.

Originally a Democrat, Hamlin ardently opposed slavery, so he joined the new Republican Party.

Hamlin strongly urged Lincoln to take actions then considered radical: Black emancipation, armed Black military units.

Lincoln did those things, then, sadly, if understandably, chose a Southerner for running mate in 1864 to help unite the country, not knowing he'd be assassinated a month after his inauguration.

Hannibal Hamlin of Bangor remained a good-hearted politician, stalwart champion of African-American rights.

(upbeat music) Bangor's Mary Alden Hopkins, an early feminist, peace activist, and journalist, went undercover, working at laundries, documenting how girls worked in wretched conditions in the early 1900s.

Hopkins advocated cutting edge ideas for her time, such as birth control and vegetarianism.

Fascinatingly, Hopkins co-authored with another woman a novel, "Consider the Consequences!"

The first known example of what today would be called a branching narrative or choose-your-own-adventure game.

Her original concept: replicated in modern computer gaming.

(upbeat music) Three decades ago, in 1993, I wrote a "Bangor Daily News" story about cemeteries.

The most dramatic change: cremations.

In the '90s, cremations were a growing but minority choice.

Now, over 80% of Mainers choose cremation, near the top of all 50 states.

(upbeat music) For all its changes, Mount Hope remains beautifully well-maintained, largely thanks to its hardworking staff.

That includes Jim Bishop, age 91.

Jim's worked at Mount Hope for over three decades.

Many half his age might find themselves sudden Mount Hope residents if they tried to match Jim's stamina, clearing deadwood, raking, cleaning, and grounds maintenance.

(upbeat music) Another post 1993 edition is our Korean War Memorial.

I was invited to speak at its first Veterans Day ceremony in 1995.

My honor, because glancing at a satellite map of the Korean Peninsula demonstrates that, whatever its faults, South Korea is a more humane place than the blackness of North Korea.

Freedom has brave soldiers to thank.

Mount Hope's Korean War Memorial arranges national flags by the number of each nation's fallen, honoring an international cause of freedom.

The memorial honors the 245 Mainers killed in the Korean War: their names inscribed on polished granite slabs.

Among the 245 are four Maine Medal of Honor recipients, including Charles J. Loring Jr., United States Air Force.

In World War II, Loring flew 55 combat missions before being shot down and spending six months in a Nazi prison camp.

Later, during the Korean War, on November 22, 1952, Loring was leader of an F-80 Shooting Star squadron.

The first jet planes used by American military in combat.

Leading an attack on Chinese artillery, his plane was hit.

Loring chose to direct his disabled jet, diving at the Chinese artillery position and obliterating it, sacrificing his own life.

Maine's Loring Air Force Base was named in his honor.

Today, protection and maintenance of Maine's official Korean memorial falls to all Mainers who respect and honor the sacrifice of the 245 Mainers who gave their lives in the Korean War.

(upbeat music) Ernest Hemingway once asked his young son Jack, "Who's the greatest man you know?"

expecting to hear "Papa."

His son quickly replied, "It's Waldo."

Ernest Hemingway may have been inspired to become a World War I ambulance driver when reading news of a bohemian painter winning the Croix de Guerre, having repeatedly risked his life as an ambulance driver tending wounded near Verdun's front lines.

Hipster before hipster, Harvard football player Waldo Peirce had shipped to Europe with pal Jack Reed, played by Warren Beatty in "Reds," when Waldo secretly dove overboard in Boston Harbor, leaving Reed to defend himself under suspicion for Waldo's murder.

Waldo swam to shore, took a faster ship, then greeted Reed at an English dock, pointing and laughing.

Waldo Peirce, sometimes called "the Hemingway of painters," replied, "Ernest could be called the Peirce of writers."

Along with Gertrude Stein, Peirce was head of the clan, welcoming Picasso, Matisse, you name him.

James Joyce himself organized party games, sometimes drinking games, in Peirce's apartment.

Peirce and Hemingway: battle-hardened ambulance drivers, big men, big beards, endless readers, endless talkers, painting and writing, Spanish bullfights, Key West fishing, Paris drinking, friends for life through four wives each.

Waldo's first wife, artist Dorothy Rice, was richer than Waldo.

Tabloids described this celebrity couple as the test of a new biological theory: the mating of two perfect persons.

Their divorce headline: "The Imperfect Romance of the Perfect Man and Perfect Woman."

"Time" magazine's cover featured Waldo's portrait of his best friend.

Buried here, Waldo's art lives on in museums the world over and in homes of Maine friends, to whom Waldo often gave paintings for free.

(upbeat music) The peak of Cemetery Hill features people who achieved other remarkable heights.

A rare Guggenheim recipient, Christine Weston wrote many novels, including "Indigo," shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.

Her children's book, "Bhimsa, the Dancing Bear," was a Newbery Honor winner.

Growing up in India, she married two Maine men.

Buried here next to one of them.

Her little brother followed her to the Bangor area, later becoming a World War II flying ace, piloting 680 flights in heavily loaded, unpressurized planes, barely topping the Himalayas' jagged peaks, landing supplies and troops in China.

If the mountains didn't kill him, Tojo planned to kill him.

Daredevil pilot, ladies man, Peter not only lived to tell the tale in his book, "Himalayan Rogue: A Pilot's Odyssey."

Peter lived astoundingly long, dying at age 108, telling war stories, taking long walks over age 100.

Men who make it to 105 are about one in a million, statistically.

Take that, Tojo.

(upbeat music) Waldo Peirce was an unorthodox Harvard man, like Henry David Thoreau, who came to Bangor in 1846 to see his cousin, Rebecca Thoreau.

Biographer Laura Walls writes that Rebecca's husband, George Thatcher, "changed Henry David Thoreau's life."

George Thatcher, abolitionist, outdoorsman, asked his friend, Penobscot elder Louis Neptune, to guide Thatcher and Thoreau up Mount Katahdin.

Thoreau wrote, "I looked with awe.

This was the earth of which we had heard, made out of chaos and old night.

Here was no man's garden."

Later, Thoreau woke "Walden," his world changing back to the land manifesto.

Yet his Massachusetts Walden cabin was but a stroll from his mom's house, where she regularly fed him cookies and a hot meal.

Maine is wilder.

Thatcher and Thoreau respected and learned from Indigenous people, saying he learned nothing from missionaries.

Thoreau studied Penobscot words, which he said helped him see the world in a new light.

Thoreau wrote, "The solid earth, the actual world, the common sense.

Contact!

Contact!

Who are we?

Where are we?"

Mount Hope itself is but a part of vast landscape where Penobscots have lived for 12,000 years, something Thoreau would respectfully acknowledge.

Today, we delight in chiming melodies from Mount Hope's carillon bells, offered three times a day in chilly weather, four in warmer months, yet can also hear the more ancient song of Mount Hope's celebrated frogs who, like the many turtles, submerge in Mount Hope ponds in winter, enjoying a restful mini death called brumation, returning in spring to bask on rocks, as does Mount Hope's famed blue heron.

An eagle has been known to nest high near Mount Hope's carillon bells, sometimes sharing a musical peal.

Says Penobscot historian James Francis, "The eagle in our culture is like the messenger."

A descendant of Joe Polis, another Thoreau guide, Francis calls the eagle a sign of goodwill.

(upbeat music) A memorial to Amanda Skofield perhaps best captures Mount Hope.

Amanda Skofield was in no way renowned except to her family.

Abandoned by her husband in poverty, she raised seven children who erected this memorial "To the sacred memory of a gentle and loving mother."

(upbeat music)