and he keeps it out of sight

It is no secret that I love visiting cemeteries. Visiting cemeteries (without a funeral to attend) is something I have been doing for over twenty years. I been to many located all over the country, but, of course, I've been to the most in the Philadelphia area. My fellow cemetery enthusiasts (or taphophiles) have different reasons for cemetery visits. Curiously, none of them are specifically for funerals. Some like to see a particular style of grave marker, like those made of zinc (referred to as "zinkies") or cradle graves, used as planters or to designate the grave of a child. Others like to find unusual epitaphs. Still others seek porcelain portraits that adorn headstones, a practice that was popular in the 19th and early 20th century but has enjoyed a resurgence of late. My main goal on cemetery excursions is to locate and photograph the graves of famous people. "Famous" is a relative term. I've seen the  graves of actors and actresses, musicians and politicians, gangsters and sports figures and those of individuals who have made a notable contribution to society but whose name is unfamiliar. I am referring to people like Septimus Winner, who wrote a number of popular songs including Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone? and Listen to The Mocking Bird or Cesare Cardini, who invented Caesar salad.

Visiting cemeteries or "grave hunting" as it known by those within the hobby, is fun (if you're into that sort of thing), but it is, by no means, easy. It takes a lot of preparation, a lot of walking, a full charge on your cellphone and a whole lot of patience. Before I go to a particular cemetery, I check with findagrave.com, an invaluable website with mostly detailed information about the famous, the unsung and regular folks like you and me... except they're dead. I look to see if the cemetery I have chosen to visit has a map that I can print. Then I check for plot locations of the graves I'd like to photograph and I mark them off on my printed map. More recently, grave listings have included GPS coordinates, making grave hunting somewhat easier. Because Find-A-Grave relies on user input, sometimes those GPS coordinates are wrong. Very wrong. That's when frustration starts to set in. I have often found myself walking around in circles, criss-crossing the same 20 square feet in a cemetery, expecting a long-buried corpse to pop up from under a headstone and scream "Hey! I'm over here" while he waves me in with his skeletal hands. So far, that has never happened. What has happened, though, is I have returned to a few cemeteries to try — over and over — to locate that one grave that has eluded me. I have succeeded a few times. 

Rosetta Tharpe — Sister Rosetta, if you will — is interred in a cemetery just a few blocks from my house. I tried for years to find her brown marble headstone to no avail. Until a fellow taphophile helped me out with some easy-to-follow directions. I offered my account of that incident HERE.

Owen Wister, the author who defined the Western novel, is buried in nearby Laurel Hill Cemetery. I have been to Laurel Hill many times, both for community events (like a concert or a flea market) or just to wander through the graves. On each visit, I have tried in vain to find Owen Wister's grave. I even asked a fellow who claimed he was a volunteer tour guide. His confusing directions nearly had me tumbling down the steep banks of the adjacent Schuylkill River. But, just last year, my quest ended when I breached a heretofore unnoticed hedge to find the entire Wister Family plot, with Owen's weather-worn marker as the centerpiece, staring back at me in unspoken defiance. If headstones could smirk... (That adventure in chronicled HERE.)

My third "white whale" is the grave of composer Marc Blitzstein. While his name is not as well-known as his contemporaries, you no doubt know his music. Marc wrote the English lyrics for Kurt Weill's and Bertolt Brecht's renowned Threepenny Opera - the German version of The Beggar's Opera featuring the malevolent, knife-wielding antagonist MacHeath. You know that version of Mack the Knife made famous by Bobby Darin in 1959? Well, he was singing Marc Blitzstein's lyrics to the tune Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, presented in its original German when Threepenny Opera premiered in 1928. Marc went on to compose the critically-acclaimed The Cradle Will Rock, a so-called "agitprop" musical directed by Orson Welles and produced by John Houseman. The show, an eventual hit, was shut down on its debut performance by federal authorities citing its antigovernmental overtones. In his career, Marc Blitzstein was very critical and dismissive of his contemporaries, although he mentored a young Leonard Bernstein and formed a lifelong friendship with the future conductor-composer. In 1964, while on vacation in Martinique, the openly gay Marc (unusual for the time) solicited sex from a trio of sailors in a bar. The sailors accepted Marc's offer, but once they reconvened outside in an alleyway, they brutally beat Marc and left him to die. His body was eventually identified and returned to his hometown of Philadelphia for burial. A small marker decorates his unassuming grave in Chelten Hills Cemetery... a marker I have looked for over and over and over again. (Marc's mother, sister and brother-in-law are also interred within the same plot. Each grave has its own marker.)

Last summer, when I was headed out to West Laurel Hill Cemetery for a return trip (a long overdue follow-up on a trip a decade earlier), I stopped at Chelten Hills. This time, I was armed with newly-posted GPS coordinates. I figured that I would spend fifteen minutes tops, now that an outer-space satellite would be guiding me right to Marc Blitzstein's grave. With a Google Earth map on my phone and an automated voice telling me where to walk, I was led to a spot near a large tree that did not — I repeat DID NOT! — contain the immortal remains of composer Marc Blitzstein. I was in the unfortunate situation I had been in many times before. Standing in the middle of a cemetery — fucked! — because some moron doesn't know how a GPS works. I traced and retraced my steps so many times, if someone was watching me, they would have assumed I was drunk and aimlessly staggering among the dead.

Here was the problem...

See that red pin? Well, according to a Find-A-Grave user, that's the location of Marc Blitzstein's grave. Now, do you see that yellow circle? That is the actual location of Marc Blitzstein's grave. While following the walking directions, that electronic voice announced that I had arrived at my destination, when, in fact, I had merely arrived at a bare patch of grass that had been hit by a lawn mower too many times. I slowly walked around that tree and a few others like it until I gave up, got back in my car and drove West Laurel Hill, where I had a very easy time finding each and every grave I sought. The GPS coordinates were accurate there in every case.

A few months ago, I sent an email to the Find-A-Grave user that had posted photos of Marc Blitzstein's grave. I asked if he could shine some light on the location of the plot. This past Friday, my email was answered... first with an apology regarding the lengthy response time. More importantly, the user supplied a photo, detailed directions and an accompanying map showing the precise location of the grave sought. One I could not pinpoint among the pathways that snake through Chelten Hills Cemetery.

This afternoon, instead of watching the Phillies drop a heartbreaker to the Miami Marlins, I drove out the Chelten Hills Cemetery to settle my score with Marc Blitzstein. Chelten Hills is just a short drive from my house. I pulled into the entrance and drove straight to the first bisecting path. I drove right past the spot where I had trounced the grass flat just a year earlier. I made the first left, drove to the end of Section C and parked. I took three steps out of my car and - goddamn! - if there wasn't the plaque identifying Marc Blitzstein's grave, just as "Mr. Sowerberry" (the helpful Find-A-Grave user) had promised.

I had written about Marc Blitzstein on my illustration blog, with hopes that particular post would end with a photo of Marc's grave, one taken by me nearly in my own backyard. But it was not to be. However, thanks to the assistance of someone else who thinks there are more interesting pastimes than collecting stamps, this tale has a happy and satisfying conclusion.

Would you like the see the other cemeteries I have visited? You can find them HERE.

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