What You Missed: The April 2008 General Meeting

Cemeteries: Yesterday & Today

Duane Broyles of Fairmount Memorial Association was our guest speaker on Saturday, April 5th at the downtown branch of Spokane Public Library. He put on a delightful and moving slideshow of the many memorials, tombstones, and history behind those buried in our Spokane cemeteries. Did you know...

• there was a connection between a Fairmount cemetery worker and not one, but several, Titanic passengers?
• there are over 3,000 veterans' casket flags flown at Fairmount Memorial Association cemeteries over Memorial Day weekend!
• Heritage Funeral Home puts on a free historic display every Memorial Day weekend featuring a deceased celebrity or famous event, as well as annual displays from the Aerospace Museum? These have included Presidents Ulysses Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington, King Tut, the Titanic passengers, Bing Crosby, and Elvis.
• the public is invited to visit the displays, enjoy free pizza, and view classic cars at Riverside Memorial Park each Memorial Day weekend?
• that large memorials are being built with inscribed histories of local famous people buried in the cemeteries? These memorials include tributes to the laborers killed during an explosion on Division Street during the early part of the last century (Spokane's worst disaster), as well as Dr. Mary Latham, one of the first women physicians in America, and many others. The newest is the Spokane County Law Enforcement and Firefighters Memorial.
• EWGS's very own Melodie Hall provides a free scrapbooking class at the Fairmount Memorial Park Parsonage House (500 W. Wellesley) the first Wednesday of each month?

Mr. Broyles encouraged us as family historians to "celebrate the dash." On most tombstones, the birth and death dates are inscribed, with a dash in between. It's that dash that symbolizes a person's life and all the events, memories, and legacies they left behind. He also mentioned that the Heritage Funeral Home's 2008 Memorial Day weekend theme will be The Salute to Railroading and Johnny Cash ("I hear the train a-coming, it's coming 'round the bend..."). To learn more about this and some of the other events listed above, click here.