Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery also Friends of Accident Victims

At 8 a.m. on a recent Saturday morning (July 13, 2013), the volunteer group Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery was setting up for a restoration event and cleanup day. Half of Mount Moriah is in Yeadon, on the north side of Cobbs Creek Parkway, while the other half is in Philadelphia. The day’s work was to focus on the Yeadon side, near 62^nd Street and the parkway. 

Friends Board member helping accident victim

At about 8:30, an automobile accident involving two vehicles occurred directly in front of the cemetery entrance (see map). A small SUV and a Chevy Malibu traveling in opposite directions collided in front of the volunteers who were setting up their registration table. The volunteers ran out into the street, stopped traffic, and began to help the victims. Cobbs Creek Parkway is a busy road and it curves at the cemetery entrance - the scene of frequent accidents (evidenced by the mangled guardrails). Four members of the Friends group controlled traffic in both directions for over an hour, preventing further problems (you can pick some of us out in these photos as we're wearing yellow shirts).

Other members of the Friends helped the injured drivers (neither vehicle carried passengers). Police and Rescue were called via 911 and ambulances arrived. When it was determined that both drivers were conscious, and only banged up a bit, the Friends group set up orange road cones around the wreckage and began clearing debris off the road. (I actually walked up the parkway a bit to where the water company was doing some work and asked to borrow four of their cones.) Friends’ Board members brought water and chairs out to the accident site for the drivers of the vehicles. One woman crawled around both deployed airbags and out of her car, which was smashed against the guardrails. The other woman could not get out of her SUV and had to wait until rescue workers helped her out and onto a gurney.

Friends' registration table at Mount Moriah Cemetery entrance

Interesting how this situation unfolded. Almost immediately after I placed the call to 911, three renegade, wreck-chasing tow trucks arrived on the scene. As police did not arrive until I called them a second time (an hour after the collision occurred), the renegades hung around all that time. One of them even refused to move his vehicle so we could see the backed-up southbound traffic we were trying to direct. I explained this to him and he said, “Maybe that’ll cause another accident.”

(Watch the ABCNews video: The Troubled Past of Wreck Chasers)

And other accidents certainly may have occurred if the Friends had not been there to help. This area of Cobbs Creek Parkway is non-residential and so there would have been no one around but other drivers to help. I mentioned earlier that I had to call 911 a second time to request the police. This was odd, so 911-administrators take note: When I placed the original call to report the accident, the 911 person asked if there were people injured. I said ‘’yes.” So she asked if I wanted the “police” or “rescue.” I said, “Well, I guess I want ‘rescue.’” So that’s who showed up. Apparently, if you ALSO want police in such a situation, you need to be that specific!

The north and southbound parkway drivers were for the most part patient with the situation. There were however, a few jackwagons who yelled curses at us and tried to drive around the wreckage. Luckily, there were only two vehicles involved in the collision, which was amazing given the volume of high speed traffic in the area. Both vehicles (one which appeared to be totaled) spun out in the northbound lane, so this left the southbound lane available to shuttle traffic through in one direction at a time.  

Friends Board member helping visitors find ancestors' grave

After the two drivers were taken away to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, family members began to arrive. Friends volunteers communicated information to them and helped calm them down. About two hours of this, the ten members of the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery returned to their main objective for the day – cutting grass and organizing the volunteer effort for cleanup. The remainder of the day was spent doing this as well as helping visiting families find graves of their ancestors.

Learn more about how you can help preserve Mount Moriah Cemetery and the surrounding neighborhoods on our website.

One way to help if you're not physically able to attend a restoration event (schedule on our website), is to go onto the "How to Help" page on on the site and buy one of these cool fund-raising t-shirts like the one I'm wearing in the photo at left! 

Tee shirts are $16 for sizes Small to X-Large, 2X – $17.50, 3X – $19.00

Please contact us at info@fommc.org to order.
Checks for tee shirts can be made payable to the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery and sent to

P.O. Box 5321, Philadelphia, Pa 19142

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.