John M. Davis loved his wife, Sarah. And when she died, he carved his love for her in stone.

The testament to his love is 11 life-size marble and granite figures that depict the couple from courtship through old age. They stand in a small cemetery on the outskirts of this northeastern Kansas farm town.

John loved Sarah so much he spent more than $100,000 dollars in the depths of the Depression when he commissioned an Italian sculptor to carve most of the figures.

The first time I visited the Davis Memorial was about 13 years ago. I had been married only a couple years. Upon seeing the tourism fliers about the unusual memorial, I set out to parody this goofy Kansas roadside attraction in a documentary. At the time, I was a producer for the PBS station in Topeka, and the description of the memorial struck me as something akin to the mythical House of Mud in Kansas mentioned in the movie "National Lampoon's Vacation."

Then something happened.

I actually saw the memorial. I looked into the stony but sad eyes of John M. Davis as an old man, no longer with his Sarah. I saw John and Sarah's shy smiles of their courting days on the loveseat. I was no longer a cocky, smug satirist. I was now in awe of this man's love for his wife.

Over the years, I've returned to the memorial from time to time. I've noticed that most tourists seem put off by the whole affair. John Davis in his later years looks like the wild-eyed and wild-haired John Brown depicted in John Steuart Curry's mural in the State Capitol in Topeka. He looks like a kook. The memorial is disturbing, particularly the statues of angels grieving over the marble-topped grave.

The tourists stay for a few minutes. The kids usually don't even get out of the van. It's a strange Kansas roadside attraction like the Garden of Eden or the World's Deepest Hand Dug Well or World's Second Largest Known Ball of Twine.

But I come away with a much different feeling. As the years have passed in my own marriage to my wife, Donna, I understand a little more of John M. Davis' passion and love for Sarah. Davis has written the ultimate love sonnet to his wife.

-- Todd Epp is a law student at the University of Houston and a former television journalist from Harrisburg, S.D. He produced a three-part documentary on the Davis Memorial in 1985 for KTWU-TV (PBS) in Topeka titled "So This is Kansas, Huh?" His e-mail address is tdepp@aol.com.