Angel Skies

In a prior lifetime, I lived near a cemetery. Whenever I was home and the sky grew dark with an approaching storm, I would always check to see if the setting sun was also throwing bright horizontal light on the buildings in my neighborhood. If the conditions were such, I called this an “Angel Sky,” perfect (for me) lighting conditions for photographing cemetery angel statues. It was my personal, yet skewed version of "Rembrandt lighting," portrait lighting in which part of the figure is directly lit while a portion of it is in shadow.

Statue in Holy Cross Cemetery

I would jump in the car with my camera gear (always loaded with the right film!) and drive the two miles to Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania (a southwestern suburb of Philadelphia), to photograph the statues. This didn’t happen as often as I would have liked, but still, I made some great photographs over the years. Here's an example (at right) of one of those early images.

Fast forward a dozen years and I’m living in South Philly, eleven miles from Laurel Hill Cemetery. Laurel Hill is the closest cemetery to my house now - that is, the closest cemetery that has statues placed high enough off the ground that will allow me to take full advantage of an angel sky. Through city traffic, that’s a minimum of a half hour drive. So now when the atmospheric conditions are right, it is more difficult for me to make the most of it. Therefore, in most cases, I just curse my ill luck and go back to doing whatever I was doing, ignoring the sky.

This past Friday evening (in June), I looked out my window and the sky to the east was almost black! Not only that, but the late spring sun was blazing brightly low on the horizon (it was around seven p.m.). Assuming I’d never make it to Laurel Hill in time, I called my friend Frank who lives there (!) and asked him go out into the cemetery and make great photographs. I would enjoy the conditions vicariously through his work. He said, “Well, come on up.” It’s very convenient having friends who will unlock the gates for you at a moment’s notice! (Most cemeteries around Philadelphia are locked up at night.)

William F. Hughes, Philadelphia Hay King

I told him I couldn’t possibly get there in time and hung up. My wife said, “Go.” Was the long trip through ridiculous traffic worth ten minutes of actual shooting time? Arghh! Decisions! I dropped off my wife and our 3.8 year-old daughter at the neighbors’ for pizza, jumped in the turbo Saab and tore up the parkway. I called Frank and told him that I was on my way. Like William Hughes (statue at right) might have said, best to make hay while the sun shines (Hughes made a fortune as a hay marketer in mid-1800s Philadelphia). Frank said he’d put beers in the freezer and added, “There’s a rainbow over the cemetery.” Blast him. I dodged all the slow-moving traffic where I could and made it to Laurel Hill in about twenty minutes.

I arrived to find the lighting conditions still good! Score! I’m golden, literally and figuratively. The white marble statues were painted yellow by the sun. If only the darned things would have the common decency to be facing the right direction! Ah, well, one takes what one can get. I shot mostly in color, whereas in the past, I would have done all black and white. The intense golden saturated colors were too good to pass up!


The rainbow was gone, but there were about twenty minutes of sunlight left and the eastern sky was still dark! We jumped into Frank’s truck and sped off to the best part of the cemetery for front-lit statues. We utilized those last twenty minutes of sunlight quite efficiently, shooting a half dozen or so angels and other monuments in their gorgeous contrasty golden splendor. Soon after, the light grew dim and the sun lowered itself behind the trees across the western shore of the Schuylkill River. We retired to his patio for beers as we watched the azure sky grow darker over the hillside graves behind Laurel Hill’s gatehouse.

Eddie Lang - Jazz Guitar Great

I’d seen this monument in Holy Cross Cemetery (Yeadon, Pennsylvania) off and on for the fifteen years I’ve been making photographs in cemeteries (I live near Yeadon, which is just outside Philadelphia). I never paid much attention to it, which is odd, because I play guitar. I often see the likenesses of musical instruments engraved on the headstones of the musicians buried beneath, but since from a distance, the name “Massaro” did not jump out at me as being anyone famous, I paid little attention.

Where Dead Voices Gather

After recently reading the appropriately titled book, Where Dead Voices Gather, by Nick Tosches, I learned that Salvatore Massaro was the real name of jazz guitar legend Eddie Lang. Now, I realize that Eddie Lang is not a familiar name to most people, but please bear with. Lang was predominantly a session musician and frequently played in orchestras back in the 1920s when the music recording industry was still in its infancy. He played on the records of Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and other well-known artists. (Crosby, by the way, after having worked with Lang in 1931, insisted that Lang accompany him on all his recordings and performances. He would have no other guitarist.)

We think of guitar players as flamboyant front-and-center rock stars who typically share the stage with an even more flamboyant lead singer in a rock band. Wasn’t always that way, in fact the idea of a specific band of musicians writing and performing its own music in public didn’t exist until Buddy Holly created it in 1955. The protypical three-piece rock band with voice, guitar, bass, and drums was created by Holly. Prior to that, musicians were interchangeable, just part of the band, or the orchestra. The “stars” of the performance were the band leaders, for instance Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, etc. The majority of people who actually played the music were faceless, essentially anonymous to the music-listening public. Even the lead singers were just part of the band. Eddie Lang spent most of his short career as was one of these ‘background’ musicians.

Along with Lonnie Johnson, Eddie Lang was a true pioneer of the guitar, playing mostly studio jazz sessions for other people in the early days of recorded music (1920s onward). In fact, his recorded duets with Johnson are considered to be the first important interracial partnership in jazz. Possibly due to the expected adverse reaction by the public to a black man and a white man working as equals, Lang’s – or rather, Massaro’s name appeared as “Blind Willie Dunn” on the recordings with Lonnie Johnson! (Listen to one of their duet here, "Guitar Blues.")

Detail from Eddie Lang's memorial in Yeadon, PA's Holy Cross Cemetery

Eddie Lang, a South Philly native, played an acoustic archtop guitar, which you can see in the plaque on his grave marker (he’s holding a Gibson L-5 model). This type guitar had a bigger sound for live playing – a regular acoustic guitar could easily be drowned out by other instruments. Electrical amplification of the guitar was not to be invented until 1934, a year after Lang’s death. Charlie Christian was a later guitar pioneer from the jazz era, who played such an electrically-amplified guitar. However, neither Christian nor Lang achieved anywhere near the guitar god status as their disciple, Django Reinhardt. Reinhardt is much more widely known, having achieved worldwide fame a bit later, in the 1940s, as part of the Parisian musical jazz combo know as the Quintette du Hot Club de France. At least as famous as Django’s “hot” jazz guitar playing technique was his pairing with the gypsy violin virtuoso Stephane Grappelli.  

Eddie Lang (RedHotJazz.com)

A lot goes on with musical recycling. Nowadays everything is derivative. One musician borrows another’s riff, while melodies and styles of playing are copied. True originals are rare. Lang was one of the rare people, the innovators. Not only was his style of playing original, but his guitar-based interpretations of popular songs helped pave the way for public acceptance of the guitar as a serious instrument. Segovia did the same for the classical guitar, in his interpretations of classical music written generations before him for other, more "serious," instruments. Segovia, coincidentally, was the only (then living) guitarist that Eddie Lang held in any esteem.

Lang altered the course of music in several ways. Remember I mentioned Django’s Quintette du Hot Club de France? The band’s main attraction was the dueling interplay between Django’s guitar and Grappelli’s wild gypsy violin (listen here). So here’s an interesting bit of trivia: Eddie Lang actually originated the idea of the jazz guitar and violin combo with his boyhood friend Joe Venuti. They recorded together as the Joe Venuti-Eddie Lang Blue Five. (Click here to listen to one of their compositions, "Four String Joe," recorded in 1927.) After Lang’s death in 1933, Venuti went on to become the first jazz master of the violin, and Django and Grappelli formed the Hot Club of France. Eddie Lang, i.e. Salvatore Massaro, died in 1933, due to bleeding complications following a routine tonsillectomy.

Purchase from amazon.com

If you’re wondering  what all the fuss was about – and especially if you play guitar – listen here to Eddie Lang's 1929 recording "April Kisses" - quite amazing. His talent and originality shine most in his original instrumental compositions.

Scanning Old Cemeteries

I bought a flatbed scanner this past year, with the intention of scanning the thousands of cemetery negatives I shot between 1998 and 2005. I haven’t been scanning everything, but selecting specific images to print and post on Facebook and other social media.

Daughter Julie holding umbrella

Looking at a contact sheet has the ability to pull me back to the day I made the images. Digital photography does not have this effect on me. Sure, an individual digital image may conjure up the memories, but the contact sheet (shoot this) can present you with your entire body of work for the day in one glance. It’s an interesting feeling.

 Julie enjoying a sno-cone

One of the sheets I was scanning the other day had my daughter Julie in some of the frames. She was about eighteen at the time (2000) – she’ll be thirty this December! Julie would visit cemeteries with me once in a while, often assisting me with my gear, but also making photographs herself. The images you see here were from a particularly snowy day at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania (just outside Philadelphia, on the southwest side). Holy Cross was a few miles from the house in which we used to live, and was my destination of choice during inclement weather.

Why inclement weather? Living near a cemetery was great – if it rained or snew, I’d be right there. Cemetery statues just look very interesting and different when they’re under the duress of storm clouds or swirling snow. From time to time, Julie would come with me to help carry my tripod and other equipment so I wouldn’t be freezing my hands (or other body parts) off. She would also hold a reflector or a rain umbrella over my head (and camera) so I could get the shot I wanted.

Photo of Scarlet by Julie Snyder (see her website)

It seems that dragging Julie around to cemeteries had a weird effect on her – she lives near a different cemetery now and walks her dog there (she is very responsible, and picks up after her dog). Not so unusual, you may be thinking; however, she plays hide-and-seek with the dog by lying down in sunken graves! She’ll be playing with the dog and when the dog looks away at a squirrel or something, Julie will dive down into one of those depressions in the ground (ground settles over time as a casket deteriorates if it’s not inside a concrete vault) and hide. The dog will whip back around looking frantically for her and so on. You would certainly guess correctly that this is my child.

Wingless Angels

I had a lovely interaction with one of my Facebook readers last week. She saw the serene, snowy image above after I had posted it on Facebook and recognized it as the statue at her family plot – the statue her great grandfather had sculpted around the 1930s!

Here’s part of her original message:

"Dear Ed, I recently Googled statues located in Holy Cross Cemetery [Yeadon, PA,  on the southwest border of Philadelphia] …. One image completely stunned me. It was a partial view of a large stone angel taken in winter, seen here. I am pretty sure this is my family's angel statue - she is leaning on her arm reading a book - that my great grandfather sculpted for the family plot over 80 years ago. How wonderful to see this image included in your photos. Thank you."

The writer’s description of the “large stone angel “ didn’t quite fit the photograph - the stone angel on the left side of the image is not really that large. I replied to her that the figure to the right is not an angel. 

Her reply was rather interesting:

"She isn't really an angel as she doesn't have wings but we have always called her that. She is really a mourning lady sitting down with her head in her hand reading a book. It was sculpted over 80 years ago. She is over our large family plot that actually holds 8 to 12 spots. Thanks so much for your beautiful work!"

I've heard people refer to wingless figures as angels before. In fact, the Warner Memorial (shown here) at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia is usually described as the angel of death (wingless woman at left) releasing the soul of the deceased to the heavens.

Warner Memorial, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia

Initially I asked the writer if her great grandfather had been a local sculptor, to which she replied:

"My great grandfather came from Italy in the late 1800's and he worked in all types of stone as a mason and sculptor. He worked on statues for St. Rita's and St. Monica Churches in South Philly and monuments for cemeteries. He died in 1939. Unfortunately, we don't know exactly which sculptures they are but I've come across some very old pencil sketches from my great grandfather, that my dad had rolled up in a closet, and they look like planned architectural features you see on churches. We may be able to track down some of those features on those churches and match them to the sketches."

I enjoyed being part of this story, albeit in such a small way. I offered to send her a copy of the photograph, and she was very appreciative, adding, “your beautiful work takes me to so many cemeteries I may never get to.” Its amazing how rewarding cemetery photography can be when others find such meaning in your work.

Graves of the Mob Bosses

Mob boss Angelo Bruno's grave

As I said in a previous blog, I feel a bit like a peeping tom when I get ideas from the pages of Facebook friends. I originally conceived of this blog as a memoir of sorts, but occasionally I get new ideas from Facebook, so thanks to you all. A month or so ago I happened on a page of photographs called "Grave Sites of Gangsters," by J. David Perry. Got me thinking about the grave sites of Philly mobsters.

In my 14 years of cemetery travel, I only remember one instance when I actually looked up where certain people were buried, in order to visit their graves. This was during a trip to Hollywood and the surrounding areas. Back in the early 2000s, I visited Marilyn Monroe’s crypt, a few of the Marx Brothers, Rudolph Valentino, The Lone Ranger, Alfalfa from the Little Rascals, and so on. Some day I’ll come across the photos from those cemeteries.

So if I ever find a notable tombstone or monument, it’s strictly by chance. It's been fortuitous to stumble upon the graves of John Barrymore, John Wilkes Booth, and Grover Cleveland, but I'm mainly shooting with blinders on. Think of all the interesting things I must be missing! What can I say, other than it’s taken a number of years for my interests in cemeteries to mature. Back then it was all about angels.

That’s where my focus was in the early days. Shot angels all over the U.S. for six years or more before I ever read a headstone inscription! I guess I just wasn’t prepared to take it all in. I wouldn’t even go into a cemetery if I couldn’t see angels from the road! Only after I kind of exhausted the obvious angelic possibilities, did I begin paying attention to other things. That led to an ever-expanding interest in cemeteries-- reading books, seeing what non-angelic cemeteries had to offer, appreciating other types of memorial architecture, talking with people who worked in cemeteries, and even dating them!

Gravesites of Gangsters

So I kind of surprised myself when I saw the “Grave Sites of Gangsters,” page. It occurred to me that, hey, Philly used to be rife with organized crime – I wonder where all those mobsters are buried? About 5 minutes of Internet searching brought me to the odd finding that the most notorious ones are buried in the very same cemetery where I began my cemetery photography in the late 1990s, right under those very angelic noses! In fact, this is one of the very first angel photographs I ever made, on the very first roll of film, in Holy Cross Cemetery in 1997.

Holy Cross Cemetery 

Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA is about 2 miles from where I used to live in Delaware County − the southwestern suburbs of Philadelphia. It’s one of Philadelphia’s most unsung cemeteries. Why? It has more statues, monuments, and mausoleums than most cemeteries in the area. Although it’s of late Victorian age (est. 1890), it isn’t landscaped with the typical rolling hills and arboreal splendor. It’s all rather flat. None of the Catholic cemeteries in the area promote themselves as tourist destinations, so Holy Cross gets no publicity. However, it is kept up extremely well by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and is a lovely place in which to wander. It was very convenient to my house – whenever a gathering storm arose, I would jump in the car with my cameras and head over there. For me it was wonderful − the place has so many angel statues you can’t swing a cat without hitting one (as Mark Twain would say).

It’s ironic that a Catholic cemetery would allow known criminals to be buried within its grounds. And then care for the graves, perpetually. No more hypocritical than Italian-American  mobsters being faux religious, I suppose, you know, all Catholic and god-fearing on the surface. (There have been a few, however, who have been denied a church funeral −John Gotti, Paul Castellano, Carmine Galante and Frank DeCicco.)

Googling Mobsters’ Graves 

My search began by Googling Angelo Bruno’s and The Chicken Man’s graves. Both had just been whacked when I first moved to Philly in the early 80s, and the city was still abuzz with the news. Specifically, I Googled “Angelo Bruno grave.”

The Websearch itself was rather interesting. “FindAGrave.com” is typically what comes up first when you search for a specific person’s grave. The site boasts “61 million grave records!” For each burial, the site gives a short bio with the specific location within the cemetery where the person’s buried. As I alluded to, both Bruno and the Chicken Man are noted as being buried at Holy Cross. Here’s Bruno’s data from the site:

Burial: Angelo Bruno
Holy Cross Cemetery
Yeadon
Delaware County
Pennsylvania, USA
Plot: Section 23, Range 2, Grave 16

FindAGrave even includes a map of the cemetery so you can find the section. Most cemeteries mark their sections with a small stone at the edge of the road border. The range and grave number is fairly easy to figure out, the range being the number of rows in (but you have to figure out from what side), and the grave number being the count from the end of the row (but you don’t know which end). Navigating around section 23 with the help of these coordinates and a bit of dead reckoning (pun intended), I came upon Angelo Bruno’s grave without too much trouble. The only thing notable was a tarnished 1959 penny on the stone. Makes you wonder if it was a family member who placed it there or what might happen to you if you snitched it.

Bruno is perhaps the best known Philly mobster of recent times, having been the boss of the city’s organized crime family from 1959 to 1980. Bruno was murdered with a shotgun blast to the head while sitting in his car in front of his house. The Bruno killing sparked years of family infighting with dozens of slayings. A year later, Bruno’s successor, Philip 'Chicken Man' Testa was blown up by a nail bomb at his home.

Angelo Bruno's house in South Philadelphia

Bruno’s house was up for sale in 2010. His daughter still lived there and wanted to move to Jersey (where all the Goodfellas seem to end up). Since his house is only about a mile from mine, I thought I’d stop by and snap a photo. People assume mobsters live in fancy homes or estates like the bosses on the  Sopranos. Bruno’s house was a very plain end-of-row, as you can see in the photo. John Stanfa, Bruno’s driver at the time of the killing, did the brick work on the front (in case you were wondering).

(Map link to Bruno's house – note that it is located on “E. Snyder Avenue!”)

Philip 'Chicken Man' Testa 

Though Phil Testa was only a mob boss for a year, he’s more famous in pop culture than Bruno. Bruce Springsteen opens his song “Atlantic City" with the line:

“Well they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night, now they blew up his house too….”

Philip "Chicken Man" Testa's house (r.) in South Philly

Testa, whose nickname came from his involvement in a poultry business, was killed when a nail bomb was exploded on his front porch as he was entering his house in South Philly (21st and Porter Streets). I took this photo a few days ago. The house is still there. His was the one on the right side of this twin. Obviously some remodeling has been done since the blast in 1981.Unlike the very commercial Snyder Avenue area where Bruno lived, Testa seemed to prefer the residential tree-lined streets across from Steven Girard Park.

Finding Testa’s grave was a bit more challenging. It probably took me 15 minutes to locate Bruno’s headstone, but it didn’t seem like Testa’s was there, at least according to the directions on FindAGrave.com. You figure it would be relatively easy, since they show you a photo of the actual stone.  So I gave up and re-checked the site. It was supposed to be in Section 27, but it didn’t seem to be there. I started thinking all these cloak-and-dagger thoughts like they must have moved the grave because rival crime families were desecrating it. Turned out FindAGrave had the wrong information. (I went back to the site today to send an email correction to the site author, but found all the specific location information for Testa’s grave removed.)

I visited the record keeper at Holy Cross and asked if she could tell me where Testa’s grave was located. That was a bold move on my part – I wasn’t sure they would give me any information at all, or they might want an explanation of why I wanted to know. Turned out not to be the case. No questions asked, the woman looked it up and gave me a map. Section 21, not 27. Strange how we often assume everything we read is factual (like Wikipedia, for instance).

Additional information I was given was the exact location and depth of Testa's coffin relative to the family stone and the other family members buried there. This kinda weirded me out, like, who would need to know that...? You’ll also notice Salvatore Testa’s name on the stone. Salvie was Phil Testa’s son. According to Wikipedia, “Three years later Salvatore was murdered on orders from Nicky Scarfo. Scarfo, despite being Salvatore's godfather at birth, began to feel threatened by the young capo's popularity in the family and was jealous of an article in the Wall Street Journal that noted Salvatore as a rich, young rising star within the Cosa Nostra underworld."

I was rather surprised to also find this mausoleum at Holy Cross. Michael Maggio was an old-time Mafia Don who sponsored Angelo Bruno for membership into the Philadelphia Family in the 1930s. A lot of people glorify such criminals, treat them like movie stars or folk heroes. One hopes that the line from Springsteen’s Atlantic City, “everything that dies someday comes back, “ does not apply to their kind. In closing, it amused me to see this notation with the Sad Pansy at the bottom of all the mobster’s pages on the FindAGrave site:

The Virtual Flowers feature has been turned off for this memorial because it was being continually misused.



References and Further Reading:

Italian Catholics against mobster church funerals
Canadian Catholics rationalize mobster church funerals
Angelo Bruno's House for Sale
Find-a-grave.com Angelo Bruno
Find-a-grave.com Philip Testa
Find-a-grave.com Michael Maggio

Chicken Man Video:  Mob Scene w/George Anastasia
Angelo Bruno Video:  Mob Scene w/George Anastasia
Archdiocese of Philadelphia Cemeteries

Human Hearts Found in Jars in Cemetery

No one ever accused me of being a man of few words. I mean, given a topic, I can empty the dictionary at it. So the point of this blog is that I recently saw a news story about human hearts being found in jars buried in a cemetery in California. Having been to this particular cemetery two years ago, the story brought to mind a few anxieties and musings I thought I’d share with you. We all kind of assume it’s just bodies that are buried in graveyards, you know? Somehow the idea of body parts down there skeeves me out.

The jar story gave me the weird feeling that maybe I walked right over them, which is different from finding voodoo dolls or sacrificed chickens, which I have stumbled across in various graveyards. These objects are just evidence of nocturnal rituals, not body parts. The parts found recently were human hearts in jars--with photographs of young couples pinned to them! What’s up THAT? The specific location was Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA (see news video link below for story). A cemetery maintenance worker noticed the jars sticking half way out of the ground. Homicide was ruled out, but not necessarily religious ritual.

"Police opened up one jar and found a human heart with the photo of a young man and woman pinned to it. Nearby was a second jar with the same contents, but bearing a photo of a different young man and woman. Officers also found partially burned cigars and candles…"

-The Oakland Tribune, 10/22/2010

I remember Holy Cross vividly—it was the final cemetery I hit at the end of a maddening two-day photographic frenzy through the cemeteries of Colma in 2009. The oldest (1887) and largest of the town's cemeteries, it was a fabulous place, with unusual mausoleums and an amazing columbarium. I made the photograph at left of the beautiful marble angel perched atop the gatehouse. If you’re a cemetery photographer, Colma shouldn’t be missed. A city just south of San Francisco where the dead inhabitants outnumber the live ones—1.5 million to 1600, the town's 17 cemeteries comprise approximately 73% of the town's land area! And they call New Orleans the "City of the Dead!"

So did I walk over the hearts in jars when I was there? It freaks me out to think I may have. While it was probably just some practical joke by misguided med students (the hearts had traces of formaldehyde in them), it does conjure up the notion of romantic parting. Romeo and Juliet, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, that sort of thing. Wait-- Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe? In case you didn’t know, baseball great Joe DiMaggio is buried here at Holy Cross. Although he and Marilyn divorced in 1954, his love for her didn’t die when she did. For 20 years, he had a roses placed daily in the vase alongside her crypt at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles. It gave me chills to see one of the roses when I visited in the early 1990s. "Marilyn had asked him for roses – she wanted him to leave roses just as William Powell had for Jean Harlow after her untimely death in 1927. It’s funny the things people say, and the things people remember." (from Marilyn & Joe – The Longest Goodbye).


As for hearts entwined, the practice of removing the heart and burying it apart from the rest of the body was really not that unusual in Victorian times (1837 – 1901), a period when the romanticism of Valentine’s Day reached its peak. To officially have one’s body buried in the family plot and one’s heart buried with the spouse satisfied both allegiances with proper Victorian propriety.

I have a friend who used to work at a cemetery and one time he was asked to compare the burial records of a particular family crypt with the actual spaces available.  Apparently, there was a planned burial and the cemetery needed to make sure there was room. So he went down into the underground mausoleum, counted the used and unused crypts, noting the plaques on their covers. Next he went through that family’s interment records. As he read through the death certificates and compared them to the crypt numbers, he came upon something unusual (to him at the time). The notations read something like (and I’m making these names up):  “Crypt 1 - Jacob Smith, 1873,” “Crypt 2 - Lucretia Smith, 1889.” The next one said something like “Crypt 3 – Randolph P.  Smith, 1875; the heart of Marietta Smith, 1878.” The records indicated that Marietta's heart was buried with her husband’s body in his family tomb, while her body was buried in her family’s burial place.

So were the Holy Cross hearts actually a statement of romantic love? It will be interesting to see what the police turn up. Fascinating fact does sometimes make fiction unnecessary, you know?

News video link to original story
Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery website
Marilyn & Joe – The Longest Goodbye