Physician - Edmund Lee Haag - Akers Cemetery - Cooke County, TX
N 33° 40.800 W 096° 58.046
14S E 688419 N 3728529
While the "M.D." on the headstone is a dead giveaway, the eye-catching caduceus indicates that Edmund Lee Haag was a physician. He is buried in Akers Cemetery, in rural Cooke County, near Callisburg.
Waymark Code: WMTYE6
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 01/23/2017
Views: 0
This is a small cemetery, very humble, without a sign, but maps know that it's here. Dr. Haag and his wife, Frances Lee (Russom) share a modern, dark red granite headstone, with the family name, "Haag", and "Eternally Together" (in calligraphy script) at the top. Flanking the caduceus (which is atop a circle with "M D") are boxes with their birth and death dates:
Frances Lee
Russom
Jan. 17, 1921
July 9, 2008
Edmund Lee
M.D.
July 11, 1920
May 2, 2008
Another box notes that they were "Married June 19, 1943". On the back is an epitaph:
Crossing the Bar
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of
the bar, When I put out to sea
Alfred Lord Tennyson
--
An obituary from Legacy.com (saved offline should it be removed) notes that Dr. Haag hailed from the Abilene area, and after his medical internship, he served in the Army Medical Corps during the occupation of Japan. He later became a successful family practitioner and radiologist, practicing in both Abilene and nearby Gainesville before retiring in 1989.
It is interesting to note that a presumably wealthy and successful physician like Dr. Haag was buried here, in a small country cemetery that probably gets little traffic: His wife is from the Russom family, and they have many kin buried here. Unfortunately, she only outlived him by two months.
Note that the use of the caduceus to denote the medical profession is technically wrong, as it has been confused with the proper Rod of Asclepius, which lacks the wings and only has one serpent. The confusion is widespread in the United States, often traced to its incorrect use by the U.S. Army Medical Corps.