All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

All Bones Considered #064, Part 2 

The Olympics are here.  If you missed it the first time, here’s an opportunity to learn about some Olympiads interred at Laurel Hill Cemetery. 

Jervis Watson Burdick was a UPenn student member of the Sphinx Club and the Canteen Club who competed in the1912 Olympics but did not medal.

You will learn about four athletes along with the jumbled letters of the AC4A, the AAU, the NCAA, and the IAAF on this month’s edition of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Four More Olympians from 1904 to 1912.”

All Bones Considered #064, Part 1 

The Olympics are here.  If you missed it the first time, here’s an opportunity to learn about some Olympiads interred at Laurel Hill Cemetery. 

Lawson “Robbie” Robertson won medals in the Intercalated Games of 1906 in Athens and went on to become head coach of the University of Pennsylvania track and field team.  He took them back to the Olympics several more times.

You will learn about four athletes along with the jumbled letters of the AC4A, the AAU, the NCAA, and the IAAF on this month’s edition of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Four More Olympians from 1904 to 1912.”

An earlier episode of All Bones Considered covered the 1900 Paris Olympiad and some Laurel Hill residents who participated.  This month features four more Olympians from the early 20th century.

• Lawson “Robbie” Robertson won medals in the Intercalated Games of 1906 in Athens and went on to become head coach of the University of Pennsylvania track and field team.  He took them back to the Olympics several more times.

You will learn about these four athletes along with the jumbled letters of the AC4A, the AAU, the NCAA, and the IAAF on this month’s edition of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Four More Olympians from 1904 to 1912.”

Biographical Bytes from Bala #033 

Abram Winegardner Harris was one of the top educators in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  After he was schooled in Philadelphia and spent time with the Department of Agriculture, he served as president of the land grant school in Orono when it became the University of Maine. While there he helped establish the first general studies academic fraternity Phi Kappa Phi. 

Then he spent a few years at a private secondary boarding school in Maryland where he established the Cum Laude Society for secondary school scholars. 

Next stop: Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he was responsible for a massive expansion of the entire campus – gymnasium, stadium, science center, and much more.  A tradition he began in 1916 continues more than a century later. 

Harris is interred under a simple, tasteful stone next to the road in the River section of Laurel Hill West.  It identifies him simply as “SCHOLAR / TEACHER / LEADER / FRIEND". 

ABC #063 - Part 4

George Henry Boker was one of Philadelphia’s most accomplished men – poet, playwright, politician, and co-founder of the Union League.  He also solidified copyright laws in the United States so creators could be fairly paid.  Oh – he was also minister to Turkey and Russia.

ABC #063 - Part 3

Robert Taylor Conrad was a polymath whose writing was praised by Edgar Allen Poe and whose play Aylmere, or Jack Cade became another favorite of Edwin Forrest’s.  He also served as Mayor of Philadelphia at the time of consolidation.

ABC #063 - Part 2

Robert Montgomery Bird was a physician who wrote a play for Edwin Forrest that became the basis for plays and movies into the 21st century.  Forrest became rich, while Bird became an embittered man.

ABC #063 - Part 1

Richard Penn Smith wrote more than 20 plays but is best remembered today for inventing much of what we know as the legend of Davy Crockett.

Americans struggled to establish their own identity as they separated from the British in the early 19th century.  It was a time of blossoming for American theater and its playwrights, despite their receiving little honor and even less compensation.

• Richard Penn Smith wrote more than 20 plays but is best remembered today for inventing much of what we know as the legend of Davy Crockett.

All four of these men are interred at Laurel Hill East and are little remembered today except by admirers and historians.  I tell their stories in this episode of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Curtain Up!  Four Philadelphia Playwrights”.

Biographical Bytes from Bala #032

Dennis Sandole was one of the best kept secrets in jazz.  Born Dionigi Sandoli in South-Philadelphia-born, his teaching techniques were sought by Art Farmer, James Moody, Benny Golson, Jim Hall, and especially John Coltrane, who became his most famous student.  Coltrane spent hours practicing daily to master the material that The Maestro gave him and turn it into his own sound, which eventually became “Sheets of Sound” and then “Coltrane Changes”. 

Sandole rarely recorded or performed live but he was revered by those who studied under him.  He is interred in the Mausoleum of Peace just a few feet from Disc Jockey Jocko Henderson on the other side of Righters Ferry Road.