The Gatekeeper

The history of the state is bound up among the wildflowers, trees and monuments over which Polly Stiles presides. So is the history of URI, for the man who founded Riverside Cemetery in 1874—Polly’s great uncle, John W. Davis—also chartered, in the greatest act of a storied political career, the then R.I. Agricultural Experiment Station. The ravishing grounds contain other surprises from the past: a tomb used to store bodies in winter; rare trees planted by Polly’s botanist father.

Her parents rest near the river, but for Polly, who lives in the “summer house” at the top of the hill, there are no days off. She runs the greenhouse, the crews, the trucks and machinery that keep the wilderness at bay. She talks to the newly bereaved, the sick, the old, and—her favorites—the foresighted, helping them scour the cemetery’s open land for their place. With flocks of folding chairs and cheerful pragmatism, she plans ceremonies of all kinds, from traditional to wacky.

Polly says this was the first local burial ground to allow people of different skin colors to comingle their graves, and it’s a philosophy that Rhode Island still might live by. “John Davis said the country is composed of immigrants,” she says. “We all live together, and we should die together.”

—Pippa Jack