Cathedral Caverns is a world-class cave 31 miles east of Huntsville. Jay Gurley discovered the cave, back in 1952; a decade later, after back-breaking labors, he had 24,000 visitors a year.
It was also a good story to tell, and one long feature by Allen Rankin for THE HUNTSVILLE TIMES was picked up for condensation by THE READER'S DIGEST for its June 1962 issue.
Rankin detailed the excitement of discovering the cave, when Gurley was a 29-year-old working at the Army's Guided Missile Laboratory at Redstone Arsenal, and how he staked all his possessions -- trailer, car, and small family savings account -- on buying the 160-acre hole in the ground, then making the necessary road access, clearing tons of rubble to make the inside trails, and putting in 40 miles of wiring for the 80,000 watt light show, leading to such wonders as Goliath, reportedly the world's biggest stalagmite, 60 feet tall and 200 feet in girth.
Cathedral Caverns was a one-family show of entrepreneurial initiative, for about 20 years, before financial problems forced the Gurleys to close it down. The State of Alabama bought the cave in 1987, but still hasn't finished the necessary improvements so that people can enjoy its spectacular features.
This weekend, a still-vigorous but gentle man of about 73, Jay Gurley died.
Those closest to Jay would probably say that his lifelong passion for the caverns, followed by a decade of frustration at the state's bureaucratic slowness in completing the $1.4 million in improvements, finally broke his heart.
Today there will be a memorial service for Jay, known affectionately as the Cave Man, at 4 p.m. in the D.A.R. Chapel in Grant, not too many miles from the cave.
For readers in faraway places, it should be explained that these counties in North Alabama are so richly endowed with spectacular limestone caves that the National Speleological Society decided to put its headquarters in Huntsville, and in early 1993, National Geographic did a film special on the caves in this area for its award-winning television series.
All of this natural riches, the sort of stuff that convention and tourism bureaus would dearly love to see developed as regional attractions, failed to pass certain political litmus tests.
Only during the Folsom Administration did the caverns have a friend in power. Federal grant money was secured largely through the efforts of Marsha Folsom, back when her husband Jim became Alabama's governor in 1993. I remember vividly how she came into the cave, on June 22, 1993, pulled a pair of tennis shoes out of her handbag, and took off her high heels for the tour that Jay Gurley led through the cave. He was utterly charming, both informal and respectful, doing a sort of speleological Jacques Cousteau swim-through for the state's First Lady.
We only walked about 3700 feet into the cave, whose entrance is a great stone smile 80 feet high and 120 feet wide, but in getting back to the cathedral area, we went through a couple of tunnels that had to be cut and blasted back when the cave was first made ready for visitors.
A lot of the hard-rock work was done by the Cave Man himself, something he remembered with a kind of disbelieving shake of the head, in a state which in 1995 returned prison convicts to breaking up rocks as punishment.
It would be great if all of you e-mail-wielding ladies and gents would tell Gov. Fob James that the re-opening of Cathedral Caverns is long overdue.
The astonishing reality of a 500-million-year-old cave makes a wonderful counterpoint to this increasingly virtual world. But you've got to see it, in order to believe it, and to do that, the cave has got to be re-opened, soon, for you and future generations.