At Carl Sagan’s gravesite, inspiration endures

It's unassuming, just a black stone slab flush against the withered late fall grass:

CARL EDWARD SAGAN, November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996.

But, like all the celestial bodies in the wide sky above, the square has its own gravitational pull. People come from all over the blue marble of planet Earth, pilgrims to the graveside of America's most famous astronomer.

They leave gifts. Coins and tiny plastic astronauts, a Magic 8 Ball and so many heartfelt letters.

Sagan would have turned 90 on Nov. 9, a birthday that will be celebrated with suitable fanfareat Cornell's Carl Sagan Instituteand elsewhere on campus, in Ithaca and beyond. But the letters, many of them waffled by rain and barely legible, pay a different, more personal tribute.

"It's a wonderful world out there! Thanks as always for helping protect it for me and everyone," one reads.

"Your example gave me hope that I could pursue both my biggest interests, that I wouldn't have to choose between creative writing and science," another letter says.

"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love," a small, white note said.

A gifted educator who made science accessible to the public via dozens of books and the long-running PBS documentary series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage," Sagan continues to draw people together through his work. By contextualizing the immensity of space, he made us feel connected in our own infinitesimal part of it.

"He helped launch the space age by popularizing space; his legacy has touched so many people," said Gerry Monaghan, an unofficial tender of Sagan's grave at Lake View Cemetery in Ithaca, and those of Sagan's parents, buried alongside him. "I was inspired by 'Cosmos' as a young person. We raised our boys watching 'Cosmos,' and together we fell in love with outer space because of Carl Sagan."

Monaghan, a graphic artist currently working as a substitute art teacher, began stopping by the cemetery on his route into town.

"Sometime in the last year or so, I thought, 'Why can't someone plant some grass seed and clean things up a little bit?'" he said. "I'm not doing anything his family wouldn't want done. I'm very respectful. I just like to keep it clean, it's not a big production."

He brought a rake one day to get all the dead grass and leaves, trimmed up a bush or two. Through his visits and ministrations, he's met like-minded Sagan fans.

"There seems to be a very interesting assortment of characters who also visit regularly and leave an array of curious objects," Monaghan said. Blue marbles are common, a reference to the photo, "The Blue Marble," taken of Earth on Dec. 7, 1972, by the astronauts aboard Apollo 17. It's an iconic image and symbol of the environmental movement, echoed by a photo taken of Earth by Voyager 1 on Feb. 14, 1990, a photo Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan, urged NASA to take and which they named "Pale Blue Dot," an urgent reminder of our true circumstances in the cosmos, Druyan says.

It is these circumstances, in part, that draw people to this gentle hill in Lake View Cemetery.

"Many visitors may be coming from outside of Ithaca, making a sort of pilgrimage, so it feels like the right thing to do to leave something there," said Gillis Lowry '24, a research assistant for Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute in the College of Arts and Sciences. Lowry shares a birthday with Sagan and has felt a connection to him since she was a little girl.

"For me, the long journey I took was from my home in St. Louis to Ithaca for my college visit to Cornell, and I was getting to see locations connected to Carl Sagan. At the grave I wrote a letter about all the ways he's helped me in my life. I wrote, 'Of course, you're never going to read this, it will just get swept away in a few days and it feels a little silly to leave it here.'"

Browsing Google images a year later, she came upon a photo of the letter she had written, scrolling down to see dozens of comments about how what she had written was important, and that people were rooting for her.

"It was before I got into Cornell so that was really encouraging. I wasn't on my astronomy journey yet," she said. "It felt like a character-defining moment, like even if Carl Sagan can't hear it, there will always be people there to listen."

For Sagan's (and her own) birthday, Lowry has created an interactive walking mapof significant Sagan sites in Ithaca.

A Facebook group, now defunct, also connected Monaghan and others, including Sarah Overstreet, a technician at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia. She previously worked at the Cornell-Brookhaven ERL Test Accelerator (CBETA), but it was at age 17 when she first read Sagan's work and wanted to become a scientist.

"He had a way of explaining things simply, calmly and in such a compelling and enlightening way. He is still my candle in this dark world," she said, a reference to the first book of hisshe read, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," co-written by Druyan. who also co-wrote the original "Cosmos" series and created the 2014 sequel series.

"Their relationship and partnership in science also inspires me," Overstreet said. As for the draw of Sagan's unassuming graveside, she said, "I do like to see what other people leave, and it is comforting to know that other people, like me, were also inspired by Carl."

Monaghan has planted ground cover around the perimeter of the headstones of Sagan's parents, Rachel Molly Gruber Sagan and Samuel Sagan.

"I think it was his mother who encouraged Carl to question everything and look to the stars," Monaghan said.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.