Zombie Chill

I finally made my way onto the set of a zombie movie. I’ve had several opportunities over the years, but last weekend the planets were finally in alignment. My friend Frank, who works at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, rung me up to tell me that a movie company was filming zombie scenes that night in the graveyard. Would I want to come by? Do zombies feast on human flesh?

Demons and Zombies

When I arrived, the actors were getting their makeup applied – fake brains oozing out of the top of baseball caps, torn clothes, fake blood spattered over flesh. After a bit of this fascinating scene, Frank  and I walked through the cemetery to the place where the scenes would be shot. A generator was running, power cables lay in the grass and a few barn door movie lights were on. This part of the cemetery looked quite eerie with the tombstones lit up white and the background pitch black.

Laurel Hill at Dusk

We chatted a bit about his previous night’s work – on Friday the Thirteenth – helping to set up for an outdoor screening of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space and a 1937 court-ordered exhumation film made at Laurel Hill Cemetery. The latter a fascinating story involving a will valued at twenty million dollars that was thought to be buried inside a woman's coffin, which you can read about here (someone had actually found the film at a local flea market!). Believe it or not, nearly a thousand people showed up for movie night at the cemetery! (Read this if you think I'm exaggerating!)

Evening, Laurel Hill Cemetery

In comparison, this mid-July zombie evening was very quiet. It was also quite warm, about eighty degrees. The sky was cloudy, and their reflection of the distant city lights gave a luster of midday to objects below … well, maybe not quite that bright. It was light enough at 10 p.m., however, that you didn’t need a flashlight to navigate your way around the cemetery.

Frank, about to be demonized

Frank is Laurel Hill’s night man – he’s the guy called upon to do all the night work at the cemetery. Night work? There are many people who request night access (when the gates are locked) to do model shoots, music videos, movies, and paranormal investigations. Frank lets them in, shows them around, helps get them set up, and is available for any issues that might come up. He also lives on the grounds (well, in a house on the grounds) and serves as night watchman for the cemetery. So he’s seen a lot.

As we chatted, waiting for the film crew and actors to arrive, I was thinking I should’ve brought of few beers, it was so hot. About that moment, I felt an unmistakable coldness on my left elbow. It was brief, about two seconds, but I felt it. There were no breezes that night. I stopped Frank in mid-sentence and told him, after which he replied, “The paranormal investigators always say this is the most active part of the cemetery.” Out of seventy-eight acres, odd that the zombie folk chose this spot. In all my cemetery travels, this is the first time I ever experienced the “ghostly chill,”  which I did not feel again that evening. I've looked up the "rational" explanations for the cold sensation, and none of them wholly explains what I felt. I had no goosebumps, and I wasn't scared (consciously or subconsciously).

Film makers at Laurel Hill Cemetery

The rest of the evening was uneventful, as far as ghosts were concerned. I was intrigued by the fact that the cinematographer (videographer?) was using a professional-grade DSLR with video capability, which seems to be the equipment of choice for even some high-budget motion picture projects (see link to read more on this technology). After my initial fascination with being on a movie set and seeing zombies wore off, it was all rather tedious. Multiple takes of every scene kind of wears on you, as an observer, anyway. Still, it was a bit weird having zombies come up to me in a graveyard asking if I was afraid …. I was actually afraid they would continue telling me bad zombie jokes.

Beetle incineration

The more interesting part of the experience was seeing parts of the cemetery artificially lit with movie lights (of a temperature balanced for daylight, by the way), which made it apparent to a photographer (me) how cinematographers use light to create mood. The kind of creepy thing was seeing all the night beetles crawling up the marble obelisks all around us. Every once in a while, one would land on a hot light and be slowly incinerated. The first time I saw this, I thought the light was burning up, there was that much smoke! I alerted a member of the crew, who went over to examine the burning hot surface of the light. He picked it up by its stand, shook out the beetle parts, and the show continued on.

I shot a few of the scenes that were being filmed, being careful not to click my shutter after the “Quiet on the set!” proclamation was made. Some of those images you see here. Having my camera with me made me feel somewhat official, like it was a press pass or something. It’s interesting how the camera, as writer Susan Sontag puts it, can make everyone a tourist in other people’s reality – and eventually in one’s own.

Further Reading and References:
Secret Cinema at Laurel Hill Cemetery
Graveside Movies Draw 900+ to Laurel Hill Cemetery
 

Ed Wood's Film

Strange Adventures of a Cemetery Superintendent

Rocky Balboa at Laurel Hill Cemetery

Last week I attended a tour at Philadelphia’s Historic Laurel Hill Cemetery called ”Dishing Out the Dirt: The Strange Adventures of a Cemetery Superintendent.”(Laurel Hill is historic for two reasons, by the way: 1) it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1998 and; 2) it is America’s second Victorian garden cemetery, established in 1836 – five years after Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston, Massachusetts.)

Bill Doran, Laurel Hill’s maintenance superintendent has not been at his job since 1836, but he gives the impression that he has. Bill gave members of the Friends of Laurel Hill Cemetery an hour-and-a-half long guided tour of the cemetery, pointing out some of the strange aspects of the death-care industry that only a Cemetery Superintendent would know. (That's not Bill in the image above, by the way, that's Sly Stallone at Laurel Hill in a scene from the movie, Rocky Balboa (2006), but more on that later. Bill is the better-looking chap in the center of the image below)

Cemetery Superintendent Dill Doran addressing crowd

Let’s first look at what Laurel Hill itself says about Dishing Out the Dirt (from its website) before I get into my own experience:

 “Not everyone is cut out for cemetery work... It can be a strange, emotional and unnerving venture. But, it also has its bizarre and often comical surprises. At a cemetery like Laurel Hill – a provocative historic site that works daily to put the rave back into graveyard – those surprises become ever more frequent. Encounters with the living – human and animal – are often as memorable as encounters with the dying and the dead."

I kind of thought, then hoped, this would be an indoor lecture. It was a hundred degrees on the Saturday afternoon of the presentation, and I was looking forward to sitting in a cool air-conditioned room. However, I was informed upon my arrival that it was a guided tour of the cemetery grounds, led by Bill Doran.

McDowell monument, 1891

About thirty people showed up and actually trudged through the graveyard with Bill for an hour and a half in the blazing heat –diehards! Worth the effort? Absolutely! Bill is riveting with his good-natured Irish brogue and workingman language. His knowledge of the business is vast, and he is quite effective as a public speaker. Obviously proud of his heritage, he was quick to point out that many of the fabulous statues and monuments at Laurel Hill were actually sculpted by Irish artisans, not Italians, as one might expect. Case in point is the enormous granite McDowell monument you see at left. Mr. Doran commented on the cost at the time to build various pieces, as Laurel Hill maintains these records. The McDowell monument, for example, cost $12,000 to make in 1891!

Headstone in tree!

Having access to all the cemetery’s records dating back to 1836 is rather fascinating. Our guide pointed out that lot sketches exist for a one-hundred foot-high pyramid that was planned for construction right near Laurel Hill’s gatehouse on Ridge Avenue! The structure, with underground mausoleums, was never built. Imagine the tourist attraction this would have been! For now, we must settle for subtler novelties, like this grave marker that was found to be embedded inside a tree when the tree fell down!

"Millionaires' Row"

Bill and his maintenance crew dig graves, move graves, and maintain graves. They plan the placement of monuments, shore them up, and maintain the mausoleums – both above ground and underground. I wondered if the rest of the audience was as surprised as I was years ago when I first found out that many cemetery monuments actually mark the spot of an underground mausoleum. These are accessed either through a door in the monument or by digging down to the roof of the underground structure. Bill said some families have their funeral services below ground, in the mausoleum, necessitating family members to scale a ladder down sixteen feet into a hole. Imagine that.

Vacant mausoleum at right

There were a number of interesting stories imparted to us by our host, but my favorite had to be the one about the father who came to the office complaining that his young son (I think maybe eight years old) was frightened by what he saw in a mausoleum on “Millionaire’s Row.” The father had peeked into the decorative holes in the door (as we all do, admit it!) and then invited his son to do the same. I’m guessing he said something like, “See, there’s nothing to be afraid of!” As his son peered into the building, the door opened from the inside and a man came out! The man proceeded to walk up the road. After vehement complaints to the office personnel by the man, the management apologized and told the visitors that homeless people sometimes take refuge in the mausoleums.

There is a vacant mausoleum here, by the way, which is for sale. Odd.  I suppose that if you can’t afford to buy, maybe you can get it on a thirty-year lease …? Picture a “VACANCY” sign on the door...!

Tour of portion of Laurel Hill Cemetery overlooking Schuylkill River

Mausoleums were the subject of a number of Bill’s stories. One bizarre one was how he saw a raccoon jump down an air vent into a mausoleum built into the side of a hill (they need air vents to allow for the escape for gases caused by the decomposition of bodies). Knowing there was no way out, Bill went and got the key, then opened the door to let the raccoon out. On opening the solid granite door, He was shocked to find the structure filled with the skeletons of all the other animals that had jumped in over time! Some had starved to death, probably, but some may have been baked to death. As Bill said, the temperature inside these structures can reach 300 degrees in summer. Subsequent to the raccoon episode, a screen was placed over the mausoleum’s vent to keep animals out. Strange adventures, indeed.

If you’re a bit put off by the stories so far, I am writing about a CEMETERY, after all, which has as its primary focus, death. Sometimes we cemetery fans forget that, in all our exuberance to learn about odd burial practices and photograph the beautiful statuary.  For others, a cemetery might have a more fleeting, yet final meaning for them. Some years ago, a man’s suicide note said “You can find me at Laurel Hill.” Police found his body lying on his family plot where he had shot himself. Another time, one of Bill’s workers found a small lifeless form, wrapped in a blanket behind one of the mausoleums. He poked at it and saw blonde hair. He panicked and went to get Bill. Upon closer examination, the bundled form turned out to be a dead poodle. Someone had cared enough about their dead animal to wrap it up and reverently deposit it inside a cemetery.

Cemeteries will do just about anything these days to generate income. This is especially true at Laurel Hill, which has a very minimal amount of space left in its 78 acres for new burials. You have to give the management credit for being so creative as to negotiate with film companies to use the cemetery as a destination location for making motion pictures. Laurel Hill has been host to a variety of big-budget Hollywood films over the last six years, including Rocky Balboa (2006) and Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) (and yes, cemetery personnel do get to meet the stars!).

Transformer at Laurel Hill Cemetery (ref.)

Rocky's chair at Adrian's grave

Rocky’s wooden folding chair from the movie stands vigil at Adrian’s headstone (near the gatehouse) and some of the cemetery’s asphalt roadways were a gift from Transformers 2 producer Michael Bay. Why? Because all the staged explosions in the film melted the original roadway! The film company told Laurel Hill this in advance and that the options were: protect the roadway with steel sheets or repave the roads afterwards. In keeping with Laurel Hill Cemetery’s drive to improve, it chose the latter.

Revenue generated by movies and tours, along with donations by the Friends of Laurel Hill Cemetery, is used to continually improve and restore this National Historic Landmark. Bill Doran showed us another example of this on our final stop of tour. When little or no trust fund money exists for such large projects as the restoration of this Egyptian style mausoleum, the money needs to come from somewhere. This mid-1800s marble mausoleum was falling apart. Most of the individual pieces of the structure had shifted over the years so that both the outside and the inside were falling apart. One of the surprising finds inside the structure was the absence of wall vaults, into which coffins are typically placed. For all its grandeur, this particular family had an unfinished basement! Built into the hillside, the interior had a simple wooden floor where about sixteen wooden coffins were just stacked on top of each other!

If you have the opportunity to attend any of the Laurel Hill tours, they are fascinating, The cemetery people are great hosts. As is their usual practice after an event such as this, we were presented with an area in which to relax and socialize, completing the tour with complementary wine, beer, and crudités. Thankfully, this relaxing wind-down at the conclusion of Bill’s “Strange Adventures of a Cemetery Superintendent” tour was not held in a 300-degree mausoleum – it was held in the air-conditioned gatehouse.

References and Further Reading:

Source of Transformer image in Laurel Hill Cemetery
See Laurel Hill scenes in the trailer for Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Photos from Transformers shoot at Laurel Hill

Source of Rocky Balboa image at Laurel Hill Cemetery
Rocky Balboa filming locations

Thanks to Bob Reinhardt, member of the Friends of Laurel Hill Cemetery, for inviting me along as his guest.

Deerly Departed

This morning I woke up to rolling thunder, lightning, and darkness that spread like a funeral pall over the city. Perfect day for some cemetery photography? Possibly, yes, though certainly challenging under such conditions. 

However, as I went out to my car about an hour later, I saw the blue sky and felt the heat. The day quickly turned into one of those white-hot summer days where birds, caught in the intensely magnified rays of sunlight reflected off plate-glass office buildings, burst into flame in mid-air.  As Buddy Holly sang in Raining in My Heart, “The sun is out - the sky is blue there’s not a cloud to spoil the view.” 

You can photograph the most typical cemeteries in the rain and everything looks new. But on a sunny, scorching day, I needed something new. Even with scores of cemeteries to photograph in and around Philadelphia, you would think I’d have hit them all. Not so. Mount Hope Cemetery in Lambertville, New Jersey, was in my sights. This is a little rural tourist town across the Delaware River from New Hope, Pennsylvania, about ten miles north of Trenton, New Jersey.

I found the cemetery down a side road, off the main street running through town. Cleverly hidden, as some of them are, from non-residents. I drove up the small hill road for a couple blocks until a grassy embankment appeared on my left. Quaint houses, bungalows, really, populated the right. As I slowed down expecting to find the entrance, I noticed quite a strange sight.

A young deer, a fawn, was struggling up the weedy embankment. This was right out my car widow, about twelve feet away. I made this photo there. I watched the fawn struggle to the top, where its siblings waited - two more fawns of the same size. At this point I had gotten out of my car and was snapping pictures. They were obviously aware of my presence and had the sense to move away. I could see from here that the cemetery entrance was blocked by a downed tree. From this vantage point I could also take in the breadth and width of this lovely hillside cemetery. It was small enough to see that there were driveway entrances around the other side of the grounds. I mounted my steed and drove around Mount Hope back to the center of the cemetery, returning to the area where I had left the fawns. 

I’m not a wildlife nut, and am a pretty bad nature photographer, so why am I so intrigued by deer? Well, for one thing, you don’t see them often in South Philly, where I live. So it’s a novelty, for sure, almost like being in a petting zoo when you can get this close to the animals. Also, I grew up in northeast Pennsylvania, where deer abound and everyone gets a hunting license – even me.

My dearly departed daddy, a Great White Hunter, forced me into it when I was thirteen. He dragged me along for about four years running, until I almost accidentally blew off my uncle’s head. Though no words were ever spoken, Dad and I both took this to be a sign and I was no longer invited  to participate in this manliest of man-sport. Happy to say I never shot a deer. Shot AT them, else I would have incurred the wrath of the Great White Hunter. No one knows this but you, dear reader, that I always aimed a little high. 

It amazed me early on that you only needed to be TWELVE years old to be licensed in the state of Pennsylvania to carry with a high-powered rifle. This was maybe 1971. At the same time, you needed to be SIXTEEN to legally drive and EIGHTEEN to legally drink! My parents had a farm out in the boonies where my cousins and I could do all these things, even before we became of legal rage. We lived in the town, but the farm was sixteen miles away, in some direction of which I am still unsure. Anyway, back to the deer.

My best friend George, with whom I grew up, used to laugh about my family’s fixation with deer. My father would be driving us to the farm in our Ford Country Squire station wagon some Saturday morning, through some godforsaken Bumfukville, when he would slam on the brakes, point out the window into a field and yell “DEER!” We would watch them off in the distance, my parents marveling at their beauty, grace, and gamey flavor, while us kids would be sneaking peeks at our much more interesting Spiderman comic books. George committed the ultimate sacrilege once by rhetorically asking me why my parents are so into deer. “They’re just deer,” he said. And so they are. 

Three fawns, with adult deer in background.

So maybe its because of my bizarre upbringing that a deer standing in a field still gets my attention. This mini-herd of three fawns sure had me intrigued. I found a shady tree under which to park my car (otherwise, this 100-degree heat would have melted my black leather seats), got out with my cameras and approached the fawns. They were now grazing among a cluster of headstones about twenty feet away. They were wary and would stop and look at me if I got closer. I was satisfied to remain at this distance and tried several times to get all three in the shot, classically posed. This I never succeeded in doing. 

If you look in the background of the photo directly above, you’ll see the brown blurred shape of a larger deer (top center, between the house and the large monument). I did not see this through my camera lens. After about ten minutes, I was taken aback by a thumping and snorting!

Doe to the left, buck (in velvet antlers) to the right.

The mama and papa deer, doe and buck, were staring me down! I suppose one or both would’ve charged had I stepped closer to their brood, but I backed away. The mother was more aggressive, the father just standing by (having just been roused from his easychair by the doe, probably). I had no intention of messing with them. The parents trotted toward their fawns and veered off toward the road. The three fawns trotted after them, as best they could on their awkward new legs. To my surprise, they deerly departed down the embankment, through the weeds, into the road, and across the lawn of a nearby house! Living here must be like living in a nature preserve.  

Although Mount Hope Cemetery has woods bordering just one side, it’s all quite rural here. The road surrounding the cemetery turned out to be a dead end, so there really isn’t much traffic to speak of. A lovely place to raise a family, it would seem. Glad I was able to witness it all without my father around.

Human Soul Found in Graveyard!

Can you believe that a groundhog could single-handedly exhume a human being? Believe it or not, a pair of metal coffin handles were found recently near a grave next to a groundhog hole in one particular cemetery (whose name will go unmentioned). The sole of the deceased’s shoe appeared on the ground near the hole the very next day!

Whoops  - seems as though I misspelled 'sole' in the title of this blog (caught your attention, though, didn't  I?). When I was in Catholic grade school and the nuns told us about our souls, I actually pictured its shape, and it was close to that in the photo above. Pre-cognitive dissonance, I suppose. Anyway, the beast in question apparently decided it was easier to clear out the current tenant's belongings (along with the current tenant) and move in, than to dig an entirely new apartment. What an embarrassing situation for a cemetery! And what to do about it?

You've walked through cemeteries and have seen the holes, no doubt. Maybe you've even seen the elusive critters themselves - woodchucks, groundhogs, gophers - whatever you want to call them. What people don't realize is that the destruction wrought by these beasties can be overwhelming. Farmers are sometimes plagued with groundhog infestations, as are some unfortunate people with nice lawns. You can’t seal the hole, as the groundhog will just dig another one (plus, they always have auxiliary tunnels). Therefore, the animal must be removed. Now, as you try not to think of scenes from the movie Caddyshack (in which Bill Murray wages a one-man-war against the gophers infesting a golf course), how do you eradicate the beast? The easy thing to do, of course, is to hire someone else to do it.

Services exist for you to employ on the web, for both live-trapping and, well, let's just say, a more permanent solution. I was going to include videos in this blog, but most of those available on YouTube show a couple hillbillies plugging the varmints with a .022 rifle or blowing them up with explosives (feel free to search them out, if you're in the mood). Yikes. So glad I live in the city (Philadelphia) and don't have a lawn!

Christmas in July

As an explanation for the title of this blog (which I happen to be writing in July), we in the northeast part of the United States equate Christmas with snow (and sometimes snow with Christmas). The wintry image you see here was the subject of an interesting bit of yin and yang for me this past weekend, not just because it looks like Christmas in July.

I had a table set up with my artwork at the annual AGS (Association for Gravestone Studies) conference  (at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey), where I was selling books, prints, and cards of my photographic images. The particular image above was among two dozen assorted cemetery statuary prints mounted in 16 x 20 inch mats (which I sell for about $40). Several people asked about this one – where it was taken (Holy Cross Cemetery, Yeadon, PA), is the snow real or Photoshopped (real), etc. However, two potential customers had diametrically opposite views of the same image, within minutes of each other. Points of comparison among alternatives always exist, but are usually not so evident or obvious. One woman looked at it and visibly shuddered, saying “I  don’t ever want to be reminded of snow. I lived in Ontario for five years and got tired of it really fast.” Soon afterward, another woman came by, fell in love with the image, and bought it. She said, “I’ve never seen snow.”

"Bird Girl" cover

The young woman who bought the piece came to the conference from Savannah, Georgia – an area of the country that gets approximately no snow. Since she would be returning home the next day by way of a twenty-hour train ride, she was concerned about the safety of the matted photograph. I packed it in stiff shipping cardboard so she could get it home in one piece. We chatted a bit about Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery and its famous “Bird Girl” statue (a photograph of which was used as the cover of John Berendt’s best-selling book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil). I learned a couple surprising things from the woman who bought the print:

1. Bonaventure’s management is not too keen on visitors; and 
2. the statue is gone! 

Turned out it was drawing too much attention after the book became a best seller and drew too many visitors to the cemetery! Bonaventure had it removed to a local art museum. It's been my experience that cemeteries generally want more visitors these days, not less.

Wikipedia tells us that the title Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil “alludes to the hoodoo notion of ‘midnight’, the period between the time for good magic and the time for evil magic, and ‘the garden of good and evil,’ which refers principally to Bonaventure Cemetery". Yet another example of yin and yang - good and evil - complementary opposites, as it were.

Abandoned grave, Mt. Moriah Cemetery (Phila.)

Most of the cemetery photography that I exhibit and sell is still life. Not all pretty angels, but generally not disturbing images. Many people like that. The snow scene is dynamic, on the other hand. The experience of the two women's opposing points of view got me to thinking about actually using the balance of forces known as complementary opposites. As further evidence, I also had with me for the first time, a portfolio of “Abandoned Cemetery" images. People gravitated to this like butter to a biscuit. Again, opposites. Yin and yang. Good versus evil. Even these seasoned conference attendees, who know a thing or two about abandoned cemeteries, were quite interested in fine art depictions of these sad states of affairs. In the future, I will more consciously include a mix of both static and dynamic, good and evil imagery in my exhibits.

References and Further Reading:

Savannah Attractions
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt (The book, by the way, has little to do with the cemetery. I was somewhat disappointed when I read it. Apart from a sex scene in the cemetery, Bonaventure’s major role is to simply afford an enticingly creepy cover for the book.)

The Wall of Death - Going Public with your Cemetery Art

Abandoned Angel, Mt. Moriah Cemetery

Having just wrapped up a big weekend showing my work at art group InLiquid’s 13^th annual “Art for the Cash Poor” event here in Philadelphia, I thought I’d blog about the experience. About a hundred artists participate (both members and non-members of InLiquid), each with a two-by-six-foot table. No single item can be priced above $199 (…for the ‘cash poor,’ get it?). 

Ed Snyder's StoneAngels Art on Display (the 'Wall of Death')

I typically set up my table to display and sell my photographs, greeting cards, and books. You can see my display above, with my wife and daughter mugging to the right. At this event, hundreds  of people will walk by your table each day, increasing your odds of making a sale. Last weekend so many friends showed up, I was truly taken aback. Sometimes you sit at your table for twenty minutes without anyone stopping to look at your work, but this time, I had a steady stream of interested parties – I don’t think I shut my mouth for six hours running.

Angels in Princeton (NJ)

It’s kind of cool that I get repeat customers each year, folks who own several pieces of my work. I appreciate you all coming by, in addition to my wife and all my friends hanging out for moral support (and buying me beer!). It’s also fun to see fellow artists who I haven’t seen in a year. I generally support them by purchasing examples of their work. My wife brought our toddler daughter who referred to all the brightly colored art and displays as "toys." Which it all is, I suppose. 

While the Philadelphia area is brimming with artists talented in many art forms, I seem to have the market cornered on death. This article is accessorized with a few of the images I sold during the show, some as cards, some as prints. I really never know what will sell, so I bring everything! Therefore, the set-up and load-out can be rather daunting - so it’s good that I only do a few shows each year. After cramming it all into my convertible and hauling it back home, believe me, I’m ready for a Motrin Smoothie. 

Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore

One large print I sold was this one at right, which was left over from a solo exhibition I had a few years ago. I love it, but its just so weird - like Snow White's casket. Not something you'd hang on the wall to pull the room together. I was quite surprised that it caught another person's fancy. Who knows what others need in the way of spiritual nourishment?

"Vibrating Angels"

The only two framed images I brought (they're heavy, bulky, and I need to charge more) were the “Vibrating Angels” and “Tombstone Under the Betsy Ross Bridge." A print of the former was purchased earlier this year by Madalen Warhola, Andy Warhol’s neice. I thought that was a good conversation-starter. However, there were many more inquiries as to the story behind the Betsy Ross tombstone, which the woman running the table next to me must have gotten so sick of hearing over the course of the day!

“Tombstone Under the Betsy Ross Bridge"

The idea of the headstones on the shore of the Delaware River under Philadelphia’s Betsy Ross Bridge is fresh in people minds due to two things. Last week, San Francisco made national news because tombstones seemed to be "washing up on the beach" of San Francisco Bay. And locally, many people had seen psychic Valerie Morrison's CBS news broadcast a few weeks back about the stones under the Betsy, so curiosity was piqued. One guy even offered his construction company to help move the stones!

I drank minimal beer at the event so I could count change correctly. That's usually key to turning a profit. It also allows me to be clear-headed enough to jot down important notes, e.g. where to find the preeminent private collection of post-mortem Daguerreotypes (assembled over thirty years by a Queens estate sale liquidator) to directions to three abandoned cemeteries I never knew about!

One artist who had a table at the event was an ex-girlfriend. She and her new husband came over and introduced themselves to my new wife. THAT was weird at first, but such lovely people. Everyone was, really. The event organizers were (as always) great to deal with (even when you’ve forgotten to pay your entry fee in advance!). Even my my printer friend from Philadelphia Photographics came by to see all the prints he's made for me over the past few years.

As you can see from the link below to my InLiquid artist's page, not all my work is seriously death-related − I do sprinkle some mirth and frivolity about. I usually have an assortment of non-cemetery greeting cards available, like the one below. It's one of my best-sellers!

Sock Monkey Nativity Scene

References and Further Reading:
Ed Snyder's InLiquid page 

Stone Angels

A celebration of t...

By Ed Snyder

Book Preview

A Woodman of the World

It’s kind of unusual for me to write a blog about one particular cemetery monument. However, I stumbled upon one last weekend in North Carolina that I just had to share.

The particular monument in question resides in Elmwood Cemetery in the lovely city of Charlotte, NC (which is right near the South Carolina border). In this land of NASCAR and pulled pork sits the Severs monument – a reddish-brown log cabin carved from one 15-ton piece of granite.

Tree stump "W.O.W." monument

The sculpture is about eight feet high, eight feet long, and four feet deep, belonging to one Henry Clontz Severs (1842 - 1915). Severs was a member of the fraternal organization Woodmen of the World. Although it’s fairly common to see Woodmen (WOW) memorials in the shape of a tree, I’d never seen a log cabin before. What was the significance to Severs? (while tree-themed monuments are not always associated with the Woodmen of the World, Severs’ cabin actually has the circular WOW symbol carved on the back).

According to Wikipedia, WOW was founded in 1890 in Omaha, Nebraska, by Joseph Cullen Root. Root, who was a member of several fraternal organizations including the Freemasons, had founded Modern Woodmen of America in Lyons, Iowa, in 1883, after hearing a sermon about "pioneer woodsmen clearing away the forest to provide for their families". Taking his own surname to heart, he wanted to start a Society that "would clear away problems of financial security for its members." As I read about Henry Severs, it became obvious how he exemplified these goals, figuratively as well as literally.

Severs was a wealthy Charlotte mercantile businessman, who built a fortune in housing, which may, on the surface, account for his monument being in the shape of a house. But why a log cabin? Though he was a Woodman of the World, that organization typically provided a simple tree stump monument as a benefit to its membership (this program was abandoned in the late 1920s as it was too costly).

As it turns out, Severs was a true pioneer, expanding the city of Charlotte westward by purchasing land and building houses. When he died, he left seventy homes (which made up the section of Charlotte known as "Severville") to his family and descendants. So he, like the pioneer woodmen who cleared away the forest, also worked toward establishing a way to provide for his family and heirs, i.e., easing their financial burdens after his death.

Severs was born to German immigrant parents while they were aboard ship crossing the Atlantic from Germany in 1842. This, incidentally, was no isolated trip. A vast migration of Europeans to the United States occurred between 1820 and 1870, with the largest wave being German (followed by the Italians, then the Irish). The writer Kurt Vonnegut's great-grandparents, incidentally, were among that German wave.

While in his twenties, Severs fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and upon his post-war return to Charlotte, became a successful real estate developer. By the end of his life, Severs had built seventy houses and was one of the most successful businessmen in the city. An account of his life in the History of North Carolina describes him as an upstanding and fair citizen, stating that “no man in the history of the city was more greatly respected for sterling worth of character.”

So the fact that he made housing his life, it’s rather clever that he had his memorial carved in the shape of a home, possibly symbolizing his own pioneering spirit with the log cabin design. It also integrates design elements associated with Woodmen of the World. The memorial sits at the top of a small hill and is the centerpiece for the Severs family plot. Many of his heirs also have the Woodmen of the World symbol carved on their headstones, as you can see in the photo directly above. I like the rope handle on the door - it's a nice touch. This would indicate to me that Henry Sever's door was never locked, open to all. This and the fact that he provided for his family in so many ways, make his a fitting story for Father’s Day.

Severs' Log Cabin monument, Elmwood Cemetery, North Carolina

References and Further Reading:

City of Charlotte Cemetery Operations & Maintenance
More images of Elmwood Cemetery