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Dead Poets Society Founder Wraps Up Tour

FREEPORT, Maine - A Maine poet who travels the nation to document the final resting places of bards has completed a summer tour in which surpassed a milestone of 500 graves.

Walter Skold wrapped up Friday at the graves of poet Philip Pendleton Cooke in Millwood, Virginia, and Marianne Moore in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He also visited his father's grave in York, Pennsylvania, before working his way back home to Freeport, Maine.

Most of his time was in the Deep South. Skold said he visited 97 graves over 70 days, bringing his total to 530.

The founder of the Dead Poets Society of America said the most memorable event was visiting a memorial to four girls killed in a church bombing in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, where he read Dudley Randall's "Ballad of Birmingham.''