“I’m thrilled to death by it,” said Nancy Mercer Gerard, daughter of Juliana Mercer, Johnny sister. “I think it was very appropriate, perhaps the most appropriate as far as his career is concerned. We’ve been extremely happy with the tribute.”

“Johnny attended Christ Church Episcopal. His father was an officer at Savannah Bank, and Mercer Realty and Insurance is right around the corner where Tony Roma’s [Restaurant] is now,” she added. “Johnny would have walked through that part of [Johnson Square] literally thousands of times.”

Yet for all the accolades that ho-hum his way, very few in Savannah seem to know the provenance of Mercer’s marble monument. Or that it even exists. In fact, it took this intrepid reporter nearly three months to uncover most of the basic details. Even still, a few more stones remain unturned. For a while there, nobody in Savannah, including several city departments and local organizations, seemed to know anything about how the bench got here, who did it and why. Another reporter attempted this same task a few years earlier, and with even less luck.

Mercer, a modest man who selected the idyllic yet understated Bonaventure Cemetery as his final resting place, would have probably preferred it that way anyway.

“Johnny was a Savannah boy. He asked to come home when he died. If he had wanted something fancy, he would’ve done something fancy … like the Hollywood Hills or something,” said Mercer Gerard, who lives in Savannah and is providing advice to the city’s newly formed Johnny Mercer Centennial Committee. “He didn’t like being fussed over … Johnny was one of those people that did his good works in the dark of night. He didn’t go looking for recognition.”

      

The Johnny Mercer Foundation contracted with the DePue Monument Company (located on Bonaventure Road in Thunderbolt) to engraved the two marble benches, which were fabricated from Italian Carrara marble. Carrara is a small Tuscan city approximately 100 miles northwest of Florence, known for the white and blue-gray marble quarried there. Carrara marble has been used since the days of ancient Rome, and was involved in the construction of the Pantheon and Trajan’s Column. Michelangelo’s David was also carved out of Carrara marble.

“Carrara marble was Johnny Mercer’s favorite,” DePeu said.

DePue ordered the two slabs from Georgia Marble Company, one of the largest importers of Carrara marble in North America. DePue ordered the first bench (for Bonaventure Cemetery) in May 2002 and the second (for Johnson Square) in June 2002. Once they arrived, DePue spent a few months completing the engravings and the Johnson Square bench was officially completed in February 2003.

Initially, the bench did not include any of Mercer’s songs.

“We were just looking at the bench and we were thinking, ‘You know, he’s written so many popular songs. Wouldn’t it be nice to put some of the names of those songs on the bench ?’” said Charles DePue, owner of DePue Monument Company.

To that end, DePue etched in the names of nine of Mercer’s most popular songs across the marble’s rounded front, including classics “Moon River,” “Jeepers Creepers” and “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive.”

There have been a few bumps in the road. In the bench’s first few years, onlookers had to walk through shrubberies to get a closer look at the bench from all sides. And in more recent years, skateboarders looking for yet another urban sandbox have been known to involve the bench in their aerial maneuvers. Mercer Gerard worked successfully with the city to get bricks placed around the bench’s perimeter, which seems to have eliminated both problems. And, it’s a labor of love she didn’t seem to mind at all.

“My ‘Uncle Bubba’ [Johnny’s nickname] sent me to college. When I graduated, I wanted desperately to pay him back for what he had done for me. You don’t want to be a taker. You want to pay your debts,” said Mercer. “He wouldn’t let me pay him back, though. He just asked me, ‘When I’m down and out, will you pass the hat for me?’ So, I can’t do enough for my Uncle Bubba. Any success I’ve had, it’s all from him. It’s all because of him. And this is kind of my way of passing the hat for him”

Photos by Bob Wisener
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