We bought our house in downtown New Albany in 2003, and by the following spring casual neighborhood walks had become a regular weekend feature of our lives.
It can be stated with near certainty that the vicinity has improved since then, although this is another consideration for a different diary entry.
New Albany’s Fairview Cemetery, which dates to 1841, lies only a few blocks from the house, and very early during our strolls through the cemetery I noticed the tombstone of the Sladeks — and the omission of a death date for Charles.
At first I joked that Charles W. Sladek, born in 1888, evidently was a vampire, except that Sladek is no Transylvanian surname.
I know very few words in the Czech language, but one of them is slad (malt). Another is sládek, meaning a maltster or brewer (or both); sladař and sladovník also are words for maltster, but since there was a time when the brewer did the malting and brewing on site, the terms became virtually interchangeable.
It has taken me only 22 years to decide that internet searches might help tell the story of the Sladek stone, because Lillian is there — but what about Charles?
And was he a master/brewer?
Charles W. Sladek was born in St. Louis and attended the world’s fair there in 1904, as gleaned from the caption of this 1956 photo in the Courier-Journal.
Sladek may have enjoyed a beer here and there, but he was trained as a tailor, later serving in World War I and retiring from United States government after 40 years as a clothing inspector.
I couldn’t glean much biographical information about Lillian, who likely was a housewife. She died young at 42, and her obituary mentioned a son who didn’t use Sladek’s surname, perhaps hinting at a previous marriage.
All these years walking past the Sladek stone, I always speculated as to why his date of death was missing. The obvious answer never dawned on me until now. Sladek remarried in 1949, and both he and his second wife died in 1973, to be buried together at Calvary in Louisville.
Pragmatism, folks. I don’t know the details of Sladek’s second marriage, although she was a bit younger, and his residence then shifted from Northwestern Parkway to the Highlands.
In the beginning, the tombstone itself caught my attention. There aren’t many like it at Fairview. Knowing a bit more about Charles W. Sladek’s life, he seems like a long-departed friend. Cemetery walks are thoughtful walks. All those stories, a vast majority of them completely forgotten.
Memento mori: if not a skull, a mash paddle will do.
