MISSOURI IN MOURNING: MILL SPRING LAYS LAST CLAIM TO GOVERNOR

MILL SPRING, Mo. -- Saturday morning, just hours before the rocky earth is to receive the remains of Gov. Mel Carnahan and his son, Roger, curious visitors drive slowly up the gravel road that leads to Carson Hill Cemetery in rural Wayne County near the Carter County line.

By early afternoon, workers have put the final touches on the hilltop cemetery, which is nestled among oak and hickory trees. At one edge of the neat rows of tombstones is a fringe of young pines, the tree that dominated these Ozark forests a century ago.

Autumn has come to these hills, but the splash of color from turning leaves is dulled by summer's drought. The trees are mostly copper, like pennies that have been saved well beyond the lifespan of most piggy banks. Here and there, a sumac's vivid crimson is joined by the golden yellow of a few hickory trees.

Even in death, the governor is having an effect on public works in this sparsely populated area. Carson Hill Cemetery Road, a gravel and rock county road that extends about 10 miles from Highway 34 in Wayne County to Ellsinore on U.S. 60 in Carter County, has been graded and graveled by county road crews most of the week.

Two yellow road graders are parked where the cemetery road leaves Highway 34, standing guard over the dust and gravel that just days ago made for a bumpy ride.

A woman who says she is a distant relative of the Carnahans says the cemetery and the road were "a mess" until work began to make both presentable for the graveside services.

Fresh coat of paint

At the cemetery, Carson Hill Church, a squat frame building outside the main entrance, sports a fresh coat of white paint. Even the toilets, marked "Men" and "Women" and called outhouses in these parts, are gleaming in the morning sun. Around the church, long tables of rough lumber stretch beneath the shady oaks. The tables have, on happier occasions, been laden with basket dinners attended by the Carnahans and their kin and friends.

Now the cemetery grass is cropped as close as the lawn around the Capitol in Jefferson City. The weeds in a large clearing on one side of the cemetery have been cut back to accommodate the vehicles that soon will be arriving.

There are any number of claims to Mel Carnahan as a native son. Birch Tree, Mo., in Shannon County, which is west of Carter County and Wayne County, stakes its claim as the boyhood home of the future governor as well as the onetime home of the governor's father, A.S.J. Carnahan, who served several terms in Congress and later was U.S. ambassador to the tiny African nation of Sierra Leone.

Rolla, Mo., hangs its claim to Mel Carnahan as the town where he practiced law and dabbled in local politics, laying the foundation for his career that led him to the Missouri House of Representatives, state treasurer, lieutenant governor and, finally, governor. Jefferson City, Mo., and Washington, D.C., have their ties to the man as well.

Protecting privacy

But it is the tiny hamlet of Ellsinore and the surrounding hills where Carnahan's roots run deepest. His father once had a farm between Ellsinore and Carson Hill Cemetery. Young Carnahan started high school in Ellsinore before his father was elected to Congress and moved the family to Washington. And Ellsinore is where the Carnahan clan assembles every year for a big reunion.

Most everyone in or near Ellsinore claims to be a close or distant relative of the Carnahans. And most of them really are. The town, eight miles from the cemetery, is quiet as the time grows near for the graveside rituals. A large blue campaign sign leans against a building in the heart of Ellsinore, its white lettering urging support for Carnahan's bid for the U.S. Senate. Flags are at half-staff in his honor.

With customary deference to the privacy of a mourning family, most of Wayne County seems to be going out of its way to leave the Carnahans alone. A huge flag flying over the car lot of an automobile dealership in nearby Piedmont, Mo., the county's largest town, is lowered halfway down the pole. Most of the town is celebrating its annual Ozark heritage festival. Even the county's only newspaper, the weekly Wayne County Journal-Banner, makes only a discreet reference to the governor's final resting place in an editor's note at the end of a longer story.

Now, laying the last claim on Mel Carnahan is a hilltop near Mill Spring, a village that has had its share of headlines in recent weeks. The community's only industry, situated near the clear and fast-running Black River, is one of the two chip mills in Missouri. And Mill Spring is where a county commissioner allegedly threatened a young man and his girlfriend with a gun after the commissioner's re-election campaign signs were torn down.

Along the rocky road to the cemetery, the sunlight that highlighted the clouds of dust of passing vehicles also touches sprays of blue wildflowers that spring from the ditches. As the hour for two hearses to arrive grows near, the light clouds start to thicken a bit.