| Historic Portland Tomb |
The room hasn't changed in 67 years.
The space, about 15 feet by 15 feet with walls sheathed in marble under a high ornate ceiling, is hidden inside a Southeast Portland funeral home.
Two wicker chairs rest in corners, framing a stunning 4-by-6-foot panel of stained glass. White curtains, delicate with age, cover two windows. Hand-carved child figurines decorate two walls.
In a niche, nearly lost in the splendor, sits a small framed black-and-white photograph of George Rae, once one of Oregon's wealthiest men.
The room is his tomb and that of his second wife.
For 364 days a year, the tomb is closed to the public, its secrets and scandal locked behind two sets of 250-pound bronze doors. Outside, it is marked only by a single word -- Rae -- engraved in old-world stucco.
But on Memorial Day, an employee of Wilhelm's Portland Memorial Funeral Home, Mausoleum & Crematory swings the doors open for 90 minutes and lets visitors inside.
"I've been to plenty of cemeteries and mausoleums," says Dave Schroeder, CEO of Wilhelm's, running his hands over the tomb's smooth walls and hand-hammered copper vase. "This is as impressive as anything I've ever seen. Coming in here is like walking into a part of the state's history."
We know more of that history now -- a love story, really -- thanks to a previous visitor to the tomb.
By tradition, Portland Memorial, founded in 1901 and the first and oldest crematory west of the Mississippi, opens its grounds to the public each Memorial Day because of its name.
One of those days more than 15 years ago, Roy Widing was paying his respects at his grandparents' crypts when he noticed an open door on a small building. He stepped inside and found a spectacular room.
He returned a year later, again to pay his respects, and once more spotted the open door. This time he ran into an employee who told him it was the Rae Room and open to the public only one day a year.
"When I heard that, I was intrigued," says Widing, now a Wilsonville real estate agent. "I got curious. Who were these people and what was this room? I've been to Europe and seen tombs there. This was nothing like what you would expect to see in Oregon. I was fascinated. It sounds a little macabre, but I started looking into the Raes and this room. I was single during this period of my life, so I had time on my hands."
He dug into the story and kept digging after he married.
"If my wife was watching TV, I'd be looking into the Raes," says Widing, 49. "I read all the papers of the time, trade journals. I went to the historical society. It was like being a gold miner. I'd find a little nugget, and that kept me going for the mother lode. I eventually had gathered more than 60 pounds of research."
Finally, he published "Whispers From the Rae Room." In 2007, it was selected as a nonfiction finalist at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association literary contest.
The name means little now. But at the turn of the previous century, George Rae was co-owner of a lumber mill on the banks of the Willamette River, about where the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry now stands. If you live in an old Portland home, there is a good chance Rae's crew supplied the wood, Widing says.
George Rae had come to the United States from Scotland, working his way west before settling in Portland, Widing says. Rae's first wife was declared insane and committed to the state mental hospital, where she died. Ten months later, Rae married his housekeeper, Elizabeth, who was younger by 26 years.
The marriage was considered scandalous. Still, the Raes were happy and in love. They traveled to Europe and Cuba.
But when George died in 1918, a battle began over the estate, Widing says.
"His adoptive daughter and her husband used as many arrows in their quiver to basically assassinate the character of Elizabeth," Widing says.
"They couldn't win on the merits of the will, so they implied Elizabeth was a prostitute. But the lawyer who drew it up took the stand and said it was fine, that George Rae was of sound mind. He had written a new will to cut out his daughter. The case went all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court, and Elizabeth Rae won."
George Rae, Widing learned, had been buried in a family plot on the West Side. His widow had his body exhumed and moved to Portland Memorial, where she had the tomb built. By the time she died in 1942, the room was waiting.
"She wanted them to be together where no one could ever disturb them again," Widing says. "Within a month or two of her passing, the people who had fought her so hard died. There was no one left."
Through his research, Widing was able to find only a few distant relatives of Elizabeth Rae. One, in Kansas, told him that family lore had it that someone in their past had "married a millionaire."
Schroeder, the funeral home CEO, says records connected to the room are sparse.
"Or they were lost over the decades. No relatives are left to talk about any of this, so it's difficult to nail down facts. From what we know, there was once an open space between two buildings. We've never found any plans, but the granite blocks on the floor and walls were apparently laid in place and everything built around them."
The room is dominated by two marble sarcophagi, each holding a coffin of solid bronze.
"We believe the marble used to make them was carved in Italy and then shipped to Portland," Schroeder says as he steps into the room. "Each one of the lids weighs at least 500 pounds."
Inside, he pauses. The outside world -- and 2009 -- vanishes.
"We've researched records to see how much this cost but can't find anything," he says. "But to duplicate this level of workmanship today would be well over $1 million. This room is something you'd see in Europe or in a museum. The workmanship in every inch of this place from the ceiling to the floor to the hand-carved figurines is incredible."
Few see the room. Time moves on. People die. Bloodlines wither.
But perhaps none of that would matter to Elizabeth Rae. At the bottom of the tomb's stained-glass panel depicting a stand of trees before a mountain -- perhaps Mount Hood, though no one is sure -- is a saying:
"The end of a perfect day."
-- Tom Hallman Jr.; tomhallman@news.oregonian.com