Archive for February, 2008

Taphophile Book Review: One Foot in the Grave

February 29th, 2008

One of the first draws I had to One Foot in the Grave: Secrets of a Cemetery Sexton by Chad Daybell was a review by none other than Find A Grave founder, Jim Tipton.

Tipton writes:

Finally, a book that glibly exposes the often funny, always poignant truth behind the life of an undertaker.

Touche. Daybell writes about his tenure as cemetery sexton for the local burial grounds of a small community in Utah nestled in the Rocky Mountains. In his five years as sexton, and preceding two years as a part time worker there, Daybell experienced a number of interesting, quirky, and usually fascinating occurrences. It's hard to tell which stories were more strange - those involving the living or those involving the dearly departed!

You'll find anecdotes of both in Daybell's charming and frank expose on the life of a dedicated cemetery worker. I often found myself shaking my head in disbelief or laughing right out loud at some of the bizarre tales Daybell shared about kooky people and restless spirits. Some of his tales are touching, while others are outright scary (I'll admit to a number of chills, and I'm fairly unshakable).

I thoroughly enjoyed this romp through a cemetery worker's life, and the trials, tribulations, ups and downs, scares and smiles that go along with it. Daybell's website's blurb about the book, "This is a collection of true graveyard stories you won't be able to put down", is not false advertising in the least. I read it in one sitting - often pausing to re-read, aloud, some of the wilder passages to my boyfriend.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys learning about the goings-on of graveyards or is interested in what it's actually like to work in a cemetery. Daybell also goes about quashing some age-old myths about burial grounds and provides a wealth of information that even I, a seasoned cemetery-lover, was unaware of. Case in point - even I was surprised to learn that rowdy teenagers nor cantankerous spirits were to blame for the repeated disappearance of grave flowers, trinkets, and statues.

Curious? That and so much more awaits you in this fun and frank work. Daybell writes in an effortless, outright, friendly manner - I often felt I was listening to an old friend regaling me with tales about his job while we shared laughs over a cup of tea. It was one of those books that you feel disappointed to finish - wishing there were still more stories and more time to spend with the author who has been entertaining you for the last few hours.

Grab your copy of One Foot in the Grave today and spend some time getting to know Chad Daybell and learn about his delightful and forever-interesting job as cemetery sexton. You'll be glad you did.

Helping Others

February 28th, 2008

One of the most enjoyable parts of this hobby, for me, is helping others. You never know when a grave you photograph or a memorial you put online might help a grieving loved one visit a grave they might otherwise never have been able to see.

The Find A Grave website's Success Stories page gives you a glimpse of how FAG, and its contributors, have helped people the world over. Genealogists have found the site to be a wonderful resource, while some - because of the site - are simply able to visit a grave (albeit virtually) they may never have had a chance to do because of distance. Others were able to find the grave of an old friend whose final resting place had previously been unknown. Some others - like myself - find the ability to virtually "visit" and "leave flowers" for their deceased loved ones a huge help in the grieving process.

A wonderful method of helping with costs of running the website and to honor the dead, is the Sponsorship program. By sponsoring a memorial, for the cost of $5.00, you remove all ads from that memorial's page. The sponsored memorial will also show with a red heart in search listings, indicating it has been sponsored. Sponsored memorials are considered a bit more touching and special, and FAGers will often sponsors memorials of fellow gravers as a token of respect or a gift of consoling the bereaved. Still others will sponsor all family memorials, or those of individuals who touched them during their lifetimes. Whenever a memorial - or person - has touched me in some way, I often sponsor them. It's a token of respect, and it helps the burgeoning cost of running such a huge website; I contribute when I can as a "thank you" to Jim Tipton and the other admins, who run this wonderful website in their own free time and out of their own pockets.

I have sponsored fifty-eight memorials in my year as an FAG member; my family, of course, but others were simply people who touched me, for whatever reason. Some others, still, I sponsored as an act of kindness to the owner of the memorial.

Fritzi Lee Adleren, for example, I never knew. Her smiling face and tragic, young death - combined with the words of the man who loved and lost her - moved me to tears. I couldn't help but think of my sister, and her losing Lance - her boyfriend of ten years - to an automobile accident. I felt moved, and I sponsored her without a second thought.

I never knew Ima Creech, but her saucy, wise-looking countenance struck me one day as I came across her memorial.  I felt, for whatever reason, drawn to the woman and before I'd finished reading her bio, had sponsored her memorial.  Sometimes it just happens like that.  In the end, I'm helping the website, the deceased, and the family of the deceased.

Another non-related sponsorship was that of the three, beautiful Coble children, Kyle, Emma, and Katie, whose absolutely tragic death upset me so, at the time, that I literally cried for days. On the 4th of May, in 2007, on I-5 in Mission Viejo, California, a semi-truck piled into the back of the family's mini-van; Lori Coble, the children's mother, was driving and her mother, Cynthia Maestri, was in the front passenger seat. All three children died that day; their mother and grandmother survived only to live with the horror of such an enormous loss. The Coble's were in my thoughts and prayers for months afterwards, and sponsoring the memorials of the three, little angels made me feel as if I were doing something - however small. In some very small way, I was honoring their short lives. I would have done anything in my power to ease the suffering of Lori and Chris Coble - but what can you do in the face of such a tragedy? It was small, but it was still something.

To deviate from my post for a second, I have to share with you that I recently read that Lori Coble is pregnant. While that, in itself, is wonderful news - the full story will make you believe in the power of love and miracles. She and Chris decided to try and start a new family, and opted to be inseminated. Amazingly, three of the ten implanted eggs took - and Lori is pregnant with triplets, and, yes, the fetuses are a boy and two girls. Doctors say there was only a ten percent chance that three of ten eggs would take; how amazing is that? You can read the amazing, touching story here.

Another, and one of the main ways, that Find A Grave allows contributors to actively help others is through the Photo Request program.  Say you know a relative or old friend is buried in a particular cemetery - miles and states away from where you currently reside.  You would love to see their headstone, and have a place to virtually "visit" and pay your respects.  You would, then, post a Photo Request for that particular cemetery.  A helpful, local contributor would accept the request and go out to photograph the grave.  Once the request is fulfilled, you have a picture you might never have been able to get by your own means.  This is also very helpful when doing genealogical research and wanting photos of ancestors in graveyards far away from home.

I have done five photo requests in my time, and each was special to me.  They were all at Greenoaks Memorial Park in Baton Rouge.  Some were easy to find, and others took over an hour of searching - yet each was rewarding and worth the extra time.  Every photo request I have filled, I have been blessed to receive a thank you email or message from the original requester - which means so much to me.  It is quite something to see your hobby helping others in action.

Hobbies are wonderful things, but when they also allow you to reach out and help others, they become something even more special.

Brothers’ Last Christmas

February 23rd, 2008

While out snapping photos in a small church's cemetery this morning, I came across the graves of two young men, brothers, who shared more than a family connection.

On Christmas Day, 1974, thirteen year-old Rex Thomas, and his brother, ten year-old, Carey Thomas, both lost their lives. Buried alongside one another in Rising Star Baptist Church Cemetery, there is no other indication of what tragedy befell the two, young brothers.

The church, and its small cemetery, sit along the bayou on Hwy. 76 in Ramah, Louisiana. It is located down the road from the on and off-ramps for Interstate 10, just before it rises up onto the stretch of I-10 known as the Atchafalaya Basin. The old whitewashed, wooden church sits alone facing miles of sugar cane fields; at its back is the meandering, murky bayou. Embedded in cement, a stone plaque sits in front of the church telling of its founding in January 1893 by Rev. F. Jones.

Though the small cemetery holds around fifty graves, only forty-one of these are marked; some down by hand and carved into rough stone, barely legible - others with text nearly invisible from years of whitewashing and the bleaching of the sun's rays. It is likely there are even more petitioners buried in Rising Star's little cemetery; the locations and names lost to time or sitting veiled and unknown, except to those in possession of the church's record books.

It is evident that this small, Southern Baptist church has survived the years through the love and caring preservation of its members; a devoted few whose families contain generations of devout parishioners. The names etched onto the legible stones in the graveyard all bear similar surnames - Butler, Thomas, Chaney, Royal, and Lane - with few exceptions. This is a church whose members are like - or likely are - family.

This community is not rich; their church is small and humble, made of plain wood rather than strong brick or elaborate stone. The church sign is small, green; the white text unevenly spaced and not done by a professional hand. Sometimes I think such Christians must feel much more close to Jesus Christ is such simple, unpretentious buildings and surroundings - much more so than those praising Him in glittering, gymnasium-sized cathedrals and watching a sermon on video screens and through top-of-the-line sound systems.

The Thomas family, it appears, were not a wealthy clan. Young Rex's grave, according to his stone, was donated by his eighth grade class; something I found - at once - touching and heartbreaking. Just below his name it reads:

Donated by the 8th Gr. Class of T.A. Levy School
R.I.P.

How sweet and touching is that?

What tragedy, then, one wonders, befell the two young men, part of such a small but powerful, little community, on a Christmas Day thirty-four years ago? I have found nothing to confirm my suspicions and naught to solve the mystery; though I intend to keep searching.

Next »