A mystery that for decades has captured the imaginations of Edgar Allan Poe enthusiasts might have started as “a lark” by a man who claims he was trying to find a way to promote a dying church.
Sam Porpora says he was the first to lay three roses and a bottle of cognac on Poe?s grave on his Jan. 19 birthday.
It was 1967, Porpora said, and the ploy was a way to bring attention to a church facing bankruptcy. He laid the tribute only that one night, called the newspapers and television, and then it took off.
“It was just a lark to begin with,” he told The Examiner on Tuesday.
“It took on a life of its own and someone else started to do it.”
Porpora, 92, a Poe historian and former curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, lives in the Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville.
If the claim is true, why let his identity slip now?
His friend, Mel Tansill, “just happened to ask,” Porpora said.
The topic came up recently when the friends were having lunch with their wives. They were talking about Poe and then it dawned on Tansill to ask Porpora if he was the one.
“He gives me this sly grin,” Tansill said.
“I don?t think anybody ever asked him.”
Then it all seemed to make sense, Tansill said.
Porpora is a Poe enthusiast, to say the least, often reciting lines of Poe?s romantic love poem “Annabel Lee.” Porpora used to live near the cemetery, making it easy for him to slip in incognito.
“All signs point to him,” Tansill said.
The claim is hard to verify, especially considering by most accounts the so-called “Poe Toaster” has been visiting the grave since 1949.
Jeff Jerome, curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, said it started in 1949, but he started watching for the mystery man in 1977.
“I drove to the cemetery that morning, and lo and behold there were roses and liquor there. I just about collapsed. I couldn?t believe it was still going on,” he said.
Since then, he and others have been spending the night there waiting for the tribute.
For several years, it was an elderly man, wearing dark clothing, a white scarf covering his face and a black hat. Later the torch was passed, and for the past decade or so, a pair of brothers left a note and claimed to have been carrying on the tradition for their father, Jerome said.
