0:01 – An arted up emergency call box, then onward to Calvary Cemetery on what they said was going to be the last warm day of the year. It was not but it’s all good. 3:35 – An old B24/B29 sign at the bus stop outside the front gate of Calvary. The B29 was decommissioned a long time ago but the old sign remains. 5:00 – Just stramblin’ through the graves. 5:19 – Approaching the beehive-domed chapel. Looks good on the outside but the inside is a dump. We won’t be able to see that today, though. It is still closed. 7:11 – A trek through Section 1W had me feeling ambitious about digging up (so to speak) what information I could find on randomly selected burials. At first I intended to include that research in this video but I think it makes more sense, logistically, to do it as a separate follow-up. Tell you what, though, I found as close to nothing as I could on Giacomo Tedesco. One other person posted a photo of that marker to Find-a-Grave and that is all. 9:50 – Michael and Lena Calvacca. 10:46 – Mary and Rose Connolly. 11:21 – John, Viola, and Frank Fitzgerald. 11:33 – Pilippa and Michele Pupillo. 12:05 – James F. Halley and Mary Slattery. 12:41 – When I used to do this professionally more often than not a photo of an ancestor’s or forebear’s tombstone turned up more questions than answers. Richard J. and Isabelle M. Pender. 13:31 – My awesome encounter with a treetracer. Normally I do not approach people at cemeteries. They are likely grieving, or planning their own arrangements, and in no mood to socialize. This woman was perfectly amiable, and she approached me, so it’s all good. Our encounter reminded of how many times I went out to get photos of old burial sites only to find the grave unmarked. 15:45 – Me trying to be helpful turns up a marker with my last name on it. Or so I thought. 16:45 – She recognized at sight what I was doing, in getting photos of graves for later research. She was cool. Treetracers tend to have pretty active minds. 19:11 – Angelina Coraggio, lived 4 days. 19:36 – James J., Mary, and Mary T. Casserly. James J. Casserly was a patrolman who died young, suggesting he might be on public record. 21:06 – John and Beatrice Cienki 21:18 – Cornelius Hurley 21:34 – Frank and Felicina Garcea 22:00 – Martin A., Mary B., and Margaret Barr Reynolds 22:28 – I can tell you the story of this grave without looking for it. The Draddy Brothers were funerary artists who specialized in marble monuments. Hundreds of their works, including the Civil War Soldiers Monument, are found throughout Calvary. Nearby the Draddys is the site of silent film star Nita Naldi. Section 1W also houses the remains of Major League Baseball start Wee Willie Keeler. 24:00 – Thomas J. Harvey, Catherine Marino, Isabella Griffin, and Ann M. Brennan. 24:33 – A stramble through the masses. 25:15 – Dearest children… James T. & Estere Ward, in memory of Elizabeth Ward and John J. Ward. 25:45 – The list of infants that did not survive made the sirens in the background sound like an existential warning to me. That siren is trying to tell me something. 26:56 – Frank Lawrence, U.S. Navy 27:45 – Reconnected with the treetracer. She started talking about what a backwash of bad information those genealogy sites are. She talked about someone who had a very common name, and how tons of people with that name added themselves to his family tree as descendant, with no evidence to support the claim. So this random dude ends up with hundreds of phantom descendants and no one questions it because you have to believe everything you read on the internet. That was a great conversation. 29:03 – Checking in on a couple of old favorites, once extravagant sites disintegrating into dirt. Either of these could have been a Draddy product. 31:18 – Is that a Dean Martin bobblehead at the McMahon family site? Hey, why not?
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