A 92-year-man who led the fight to preserve the historic site of the grave of Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore, Md., claims to be the mystery man who left three roses and a bottle of good cognac every year at the grave. “It was a promotional idea,” Sam Popora, a former advertising executive, claims. “We made it up, never dreaming it would go worldwide,”according to the Washington Post.
In the late 1960s Popora was made historian of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, built in 1852. There were fewer than 60 congregants and Porpora, then in his 60s, was one of the youngest. The overgrown cemetery was a favorite of drunken derelicts. The site needed money and publicity, Porpora recalled. That, he said, is when the idea of the Poe toaster came to him. The story, as Porpora told it to a local reporter then, was that the tribute had been laid at the grave on Poe’s Jan. 19 birthday every year since 1949. Three roses one for Poe, one for his wife, and one for his mother-in-law and a bottle of cognac, because Poe loved the stuff even though he couldn’t afford to drink it unless someone else was buying.
Since at least the early 1970s, every year on January 19, Poe’s birthday, a man would appear at the Westminster Burying Grounds, dressed in black, wearing a hat and scarf to hide his identity.
In about 1977, a handful of people was invited each year to a vigil for the mysterious stranger. The media began chronicling the arrivals and departures of a “Poe-like figure.”
But even with the “confession,” there is still mystery.
Members of Baltimore’s E.A. Poe Society insist they recall members of the old congregation all now dead talking about the Poe toaster before Porpora says he made it up. Stories since the 1970s refer to older newspaper accounts about the visitor. Jerome found a 1950 newspaper clipping from The (Baltimore) Evening Sun that mentions “an anonymous citizen who creeps in annually to place an empty bottle (of excellent label)” against the gravestone.
In a follow-up article in the Post, Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House in Baltimore, disputes Porpora’s claim. “It’s not Sam,” Jerome said finally. “He’s like a mentor to me and I love him, but, believe me, it’s not him.” To criticize Porpora would be akin to attacking his own father, he explained. If it weren’t for Porpora, Jerome might not have become a Poe fanatic. And yet, Jerome said, after struggling to find a more delicate way: “There are holes so big in Sam’s story, you could drive a Mack truck through them.”
Digging this week through archives at the Maryland Historical Society, Jerome found the article that had led him to discover the cognac and roses. It was dated 1950. And there are other inconsistencies in Porpora’s story, which has changed a bit since he first made his claim.
Nor is Porpora’s account consistent. He said he invented the stranger in an interview with a reporter in 1967, but the story to which he refers appeared in 1976. Shortly afterward, the vigils and the yearly chronicles of the stranger’s visits began. During the same interview, Porpora said both that he made the story up and that one of his tour guides went through a pantomime of dressing up, sneaking into the cemetery and laying the tribute on the grave.
In some versions, he made up the tale for a newspaper story, which appears to have run in 1976. In others, he was the figure in black.
Porpora attributes people’s doubts to how popular and speculative the tradition has become since he says he began it. For Jerome, however, there is no doubt: Porpora’s claim could not be true. The 1950 article is proof.
A few years ago, the mystery man left a note for Jerome, along with the bottle and roses, that said, “The torch will be passed.”
The next year, he said, a noticeably younger man appeared with another note. The man in black had passed away, the note read, but his two sons will continue his tradition.
The last note from the two sons contained something else, personal information, Jerome said, that he just can’t talk about.
Jerome insists that he still does not know the identity of the man or those of his successors.
“But if I found out who did it, I wouldn’t even tell my wife,” he said.
After all, like the man in black did, Jerome loves Poe. And anyone who loves Poe, he explained, understands the importance of mystery.
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