Grave of W.A. Lee - Rogersville, TN
Posted by: 
vhasler
N 36° 25.538 W 082° 57.232
17S E 324843 N 4032932
Two lines were reportedly added to a familiar epithet to give a ironic twist.
Waymark Code: WMD1KA
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 11/06/2011
Views: 4
The guidebook reports:
On a hill about 300 yards from the Ebbing and Flowing Spring is a burial ground where a monument over the grave of W.A. Lee (1885-1906) bears the familiar inscription:
Remember me, as you pass by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now you will soon be
Prepare for death and follow me.
Beneath the inscription someone has cut a comment into the stone:
To follow you, I am not content
Unless I know which way you went.
----- TENNESSEE - A Guide to the State (third printing 1949).
Vince Staten, a local history and culture columnist for the Kingsport Times-News newspaper, did a piece about trying to find this monument - which then I realized I had already been at the Ebbing and Flowing Spring UMC due to Waymarking. Vince's investigative reporting (reported in the 8/12/2011 newspaper) concluded that the extra lines were not cut into the stone, but most likely written with a heavy pencil. The lines still existed in a 1966 newspaper article and then in mid-1990s. Time and weather have removed them from what is actually the back side of the headstone. Revisting the cemetery later in the year verified this observation.