Episodes
6 days ago
6 days ago
It wasn’t long after movies became ubiquitous in America that movie fan magazine appeared. Eventually there would be more than 20 of them.
Gladys Hall had a stellar reputation as a “safe” interviewer who could be depended on to tell a good story without any scandal. Her interview with Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi is one of the strangest things you could imagine.
She was married to glamour photographer Russell Ball, remembered today for his classic portraits of Louise Brooks, Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, and Gloria Swanson, who used Ball as her private photographer.
Gladys Hall and Russell Ball are interred in an unmarked grave in the Lansdowne Section of Laurel Hill East. If you like watching movies, you’ll love this podcast about their early days – the mid-April 2024 edition of Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #031 – Glamourizing Early Hollywood.
Monday Apr 01, 2024
ABC#061: Play Ball!, Part 3 - Four More Baseball Pioneers at Laurel Hill
Monday Apr 01, 2024
Monday Apr 01, 2024
Henry Walter “Slick” Schlichter started as a bantamweight and a boxing promoter who became a sportswriter and then partnered with Black baseball pioneer Sol White to organize the best Negro league team in the country at the turn of the 20th century.
Cub Stricker was a good fielding 2nd baseman with a hot temper who was arrested on the field to avoid fan rioting when he struck a heckler with a thrown ball.
Jack McFetridge was the best amateur pitcher in Philadelphia for years; when he finally went pro, he wasn’t that good.
Pete Childs was a fine 2nd baseman and served in the role for the 1902 Phillies. It was while serving as player-manager for an Ohio League team that he pulled the unfathomable feat of throwing one pitch as a reliever and getting three out.
These four men were born in a ten-year span, three are interred at LHW and one at LHE. They are featured in this month’s episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #061 for April 2024 – Play Ball!, Part Three – Four More Laurel Hill Baseball Pioneers.
Thursday Mar 14, 2024
BBB#030: Grayce Nottage Nicholas - Black Is Beautiful
Thursday Mar 14, 2024
Thursday Mar 14, 2024
Grayce Nottage-Nicholas was an older sister of Civil Rights activist C. Delores Tucker, but she made a name for herself as a teacher, parole officer, police detective, and beauty queen at a time when women of color were not welcomed to traditional beauty pageants.
In this episode I tell you about the evolution of beauty pageants, how pigmentocracy and straight hair defined beauty from a white perspective, how African American women created their own standards of beauty and started their own beauty pageants, and much more on this Women’s History Month Broadcast of Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories – Black Is Beautiful.
Friday Mar 01, 2024
ABC#060: Three More Women Who Changed Philadelphia
Friday Mar 01, 2024
Friday Mar 01, 2024
Woman have played a major but underrecognized role in our Nation’s history since its inception.
*London-born Esther DeBerdt Reed married a man who became George Washington’s right-hand man and switched her Tory allegiance to become a radial patriot; the organization she founded to provide some relief to the soldiers fighting for her freedom didn’t quite go the way that she had planned.
*Elizabeth Duane Gillespie came from a politically active family; she was the chief fundraiser and organizer for the Sanitary Fair of 1864, which put her in the position to lead the way for the Centennial Exposition of 1876.
*Anna Justina Magee was the last of seven siblings who lived together their entire lives. Her legacy for the family was a hospital designed for people who were convalescing from injury – The Magee Rehabilitation Hospital.
These three women are featured in this month’s episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #060 for March 2024 – Three More Women Who Changed Philadelphia.
Friday Feb 16, 2024
BBB#029: MOVE and Laurel Hill
Friday Feb 16, 2024
Friday Feb 16, 2024
In 1985, the City of Philadelphia did something unheard of in the United States – it dropped a bomb on one of its neighborhoods. The resulting fire killed 6 adult and 5 child members of a radical primitivist environmental anarchic group called MOVE. The fire spread along Osage Avenue, destroyed more than 60 homes, and left 250 men, women, and children homeless. Former MOVE members are interred in Nature’s Sanctuary, the green natural burial section at Laurel Hill West. Louise Leaphart James and LaVerne Leaphart Sims were sisters to the acknowledged group leader John Africa but left the organization before the conflagration. To tell their story, I must tell the story of John Africa, the formation of MOVE, and its frequent confrontations with neighbors and city officials in this month’s episode of Biographical Bytes from Bala #029: MOVE and Laurel Hill.
Thursday Feb 01, 2024
ABC#059: Three More Black Pioneers
Thursday Feb 01, 2024
Thursday Feb 01, 2024
The Black population of Philadelphia dates to Colonial times but expanded tremendously during the so-called Great Migration that started around 1910.
Sarah A. Anderson came from an educated family – her father was the first Black dentist in Florida and her husband was a politically active podiatrist. Sarah served 17 years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and quietly changed life for the better for thousands of Pennsylvanians, Black and white.
Samuel L. Evans was also from Florida and saw five lynchings before he was 10 years old. Through machinations that people are still pondering, he managed to make himself the “Godfather of Black Philadelphia” despite never being elected to public office. His wake was in City Hall.
Winifred Harris was the woman you wanted as your next-door neighbor. She rescued abandoned properties in West Philadelphia and converted them into vegetable gardens for the neighborhood, while planting more than 1000 trees for the city. Her shocking death at the hands of a home intruder was mourned by all who knew her.
For Black history month, learn about these three lesser-known heroes of Black Philadelphia in the February 2024 episode of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Three More Black Pioneers”.
Monday Jan 15, 2024
BBB#028: The Philadelphia Orchestra & Laurel Hill West
Monday Jan 15, 2024
Monday Jan 15, 2024
The Philadelphia Orchestra has been one of America’s “Big Five” philharmonics for more than a century. As it was being assembled in the late 1890s, it looked like the job of “first conductor” would go to local concertmaster and second generation Irish-American Harry Gordon Thunder, but instead the position went to Johann Friedrich Ludwig “Fritz” Scheel, a German immigrant with seemingly unlimited energies and innovations, but the job probably shortened his life.
In contemporary times, the first violinist chair was held for decades by Germantown-born William Joseph de Pasquale, a calm, dependable right-hand man to the conductor, and one of four brothers who played together in a string quartet.
These three men – Thunder, Scheel, and de Pasquale – are part of the reason that the Philadelphia Orchestra has its universal reputation. You can hear about them this month on “Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #028 – The Philadelphia Orchestra and Laurel Hill West."
Monday Jan 01, 2024
ABC#058: Laurel Hill & Big Pharma
Monday Jan 01, 2024
Monday Jan 01, 2024
Several multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies got their starts in Philadelphia as neighborhood drug stores.
Weightman, Powers, and Rosengarten made their money by selling quinine to the US government.
James Smith and Clayton French did not know each and both started as neighborhood druggists; but family and business partners kept their businesses going and their names prominent long after their deaths.
The Wyeth Brothers invented a machine that standardized the size of pills and tablets, and William Warner learned how to sugarcoat them. Warner’s pharmacopeia was distributed internationally and served as the standard reference for doctors and pharmacists for years.
And McNeil Laboratories introduced Tylenol Elixir for Children in 1955, then watched it become one of the best-selling over-the-counter meds of all time.
McNeil is interred at Laurel Hill West, while all the others are at Laurel Hill East. All of them have intriguing stories you will hear in this episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #058 – Laurel Hill and Big Pharma.
Wednesday Dec 27, 2023
BONUS: Anna Weightman Penfield and the Fioretta Follies
Wednesday Dec 27, 2023
Wednesday Dec 27, 2023
Anna Weightman Penfield, the only daughter of quinine king William Weightman, became the richest woman in the world when her father died. In 1929 when she was in her 80s, she decided that she wanted to produce a Broadway musical featuring songs by two young friends. She even managed to convince impresario Earl Carroll, the so-called “troubadour of the nude”, to write the book and produce it. He called it “Fioretta”. Carroll used it as a vehicle for his current girlfriend Dorothy Knapp, a chorus girl who could not sing, act, or dance. Despite the casting of vaudeville legends Leon Erroll and Fanny Brice, the show flopped and closed after just a few months, and Mrs. Penfield lost a bundle of money. Then, the talentless Knapp sued Penfield, Carroll, and the composers for lost wages. To tell this story, I read you a newspaper article from 1947 and part of a chapter from Carroll’s biography. It's a story not to be missed.
Friday Dec 15, 2023
BBB#027: An Old Soul Guitarist - Jack Rose
Friday Dec 15, 2023
Friday Dec 15, 2023
Jack Rose was an old soul guitarist who took John Fahey and other fingerpickers as role models. Born in Virginia in 1971, Rose moved to Philadelphia in 1998, where he became part of the alternative music scene. As he taught himself the primitive styles of Blind Blake, Charlie Patton, and others, he took on the name “Dr. Ragtime”.
His album “Raag Manifesto” was named one of the top 50 records of the year by British music magazine “The Wire”. Davendra Banhart included one of his songs in the compilation “Golden Apples of the Sun”. His fourth recording, “Kensington Blues”, was his breakthrough and he toured extensively.
Rose’s career was tragically cut short in 2009 when he died before his 39th birthday and just before the release of his 5th album “Luck in the Valley”. He is interred in the Nature’s Sanctuary section of Laurel Hill West, one of our green burial spaces.
But his music lives on.
Friday Dec 01, 2023
ABC#057: Murder Most Foul, Part 1
Friday Dec 01, 2023
Friday Dec 01, 2023
There are hundreds of people buried at Laurel Hill East and Laurel Hill West who were the victims of personal violence – accidental, intentional, and self-inflicted. This month’s episode tells you of nine people who were killed by others.
Author / historian Tom Keels will read you a chapter from his book “Wicked Philadelphia” that tells the amazing story of Singleton Mercer and Mahlon Hutchinson Heberton.
I will tell you of
* Mine supervisor George K. Smith who was purportedly killed by the Irish terrorist group the Molly Maguires
* Businessman George Haas, shot and killed on his lunch break by a disgruntled former employee
* Archibald McCurdy, night watchman in his brothers’ store who was killed when he discovered a burglary in process
* Ida Chadwick, a 9-year-old girl whose depressed father killed them both with illuminating gas
* C. Morgan Knight, Chestnut Hill financier and amateur yachtsman who died while attempting to capture a robber at Wanamaker’s.
There is also a new voice for you. Volunteer guide Sarah Hamill gives a sketch of a young mother and her two daughters who were shot to death by their disgruntled butler.
Murder Most Foul, Part 1 is the topic of the December 2023 episode of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories.
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
BBB#026: The Surgeon Is a General - I.S. Ravdin
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
Isidor Schwaner Ravdin was a second-generation American and a fourth-generation physician who combined research with surgery and completely changed the fields of both. During his 40+ years at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Ravdin rose to become Chief of Surgery and Director of Research.
During World War II, he ran what Vinegar Joe Stillwell called “the best g**d*** hospital in the Army” during the China Burma India campaign. When President Eisenhower was struck with a bowel obstruction in 1956, Ravdin was summoned to Washington to perform the surgery. He even appeared as a heroic character in a popular cartoon strip of his time.
If you have visited the HUP campus, you have almost certainly walked through the Ravdin pavilion. It is his story I will tell you in this episode of Biographical Bytes from Bala #026 – The Surgeon Is a General.
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
ABC#056: Philadelphia and Oil
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
We don’t normally think of Philadelphia as being an oil town, but the Point Breeze refinery in South Philadelphia, easily visible from the Pratt Bridge on your ride to the airport, dominated the skyline for many decades with its storage tanks and distilling towers.
Born in the middle of Pennsylvania’s Titusville oil boom in the northwest corner of the state, J. Newton Pew established Sun Oil in 1890.
After its move to Philadelphia, Newton’s sons Howard and Joe Jr. ran the company for decades and established a refinery at Marcus Hook and the Sun Shipbuilding Company in Chester.
The Pews are known today for their charitable contributions throughout the city. The Pew Mausoleum at Laurel Hill West holds several generations of this prosperous philanthropic family.
Learn about oil, crude and refined, shipbuilding, philanthropy, and even some political intrigue in this month’s episode of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Philadelphia and Oil” from wherever you listen to podcasts.
Sunday Oct 15, 2023
BBB#025: Free Science for All - William Wagner
Sunday Oct 15, 2023
Sunday Oct 15, 2023
William Wagner was a self-taught naturalist and a very rich man who believed in giving free education to anyone who wanted it. He opened his Wagner Free Institute of Science in 1855 and used his own collection as teaching aids – flora and fauna from around the world, fossils, rocks, bones – tens of thousands of items. When Wagner died in 1885, his museum was improved by Joseph Leidy, “the last man who knew everything,” and further expanded. Now a visit to the Wagner in North Philadelphia is a trip back in time more than 130 years while it continues to give free classes on a variety of topics and to offer its archives and library as a resource to anyone interested in the natural sciences.
Sunday Oct 01, 2023
ABC#055: The Supremes - Justices at Laurel Hill
Sunday Oct 01, 2023
Sunday Oct 01, 2023
Robert Cooper Grier was selected for the United States Supreme Court in 1846 to replace another justice who had died 841 days before – the longest gap in the history of the court. He served for nearly a quarter century and voted in many key decisions, including Dred Scott v. Sandford.
George Sharswood was the first dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. While serving as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, he made a decision which probably delayed women’s rights to vote in Pennsylvania by more than 40 years.
James Tyndale Mitchell was also a Chief Justice. He was a superb lawyer and judge but may be remembered more for his giant collections of autographs and portraits of famous people, considered the finest of his day.
William Irwin Schaffer spent two years as state attorney general before he became an Associate Judge on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. One of his decisions delayed Sunday baseball in Philadelphia by several years.
Grier and Schaffer are buried at Laurel Hill West, Sharswood and Mitchell at Laurel Hill East. They are the topics for All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #055 for October 2023 – The Supremes.
Friday Sep 15, 2023
BBB#024: The Female Bobby Jones - Glenna Collett Vare
Friday Sep 15, 2023
Friday Sep 15, 2023
Glenna Collett-Vare was one of the giants of women’s golf and the top American player in the 1920s and 30s. She won 49 amateur tournaments between 1921 and 1935. She could hit a ball straight down the fairway nearly 300 yards. She was the first woman to break 80 in the U.S. Women’s Amateur, which she won six times. She is in the golf hall of fame, and the Vare Trophy is awarded annually to the woman professional with the best scoring average. She played into her 80s but never turned professional. In her day, she was "The Female Bobby Jones".
She is buried at Laurel Hill West in a crypt that does not even acknowledge her presence – an unmarked grave. Glenna Collett-Vare is the subject for this episode of Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories.
Friday Sep 01, 2023
ABC#054 Hey! I Know That Song! - Composers and Interpreters
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Septimus Winner was the composer of several catchy songs you sang as a child or have sung with your children
William Kirkpatrick was a hymn writer whose Christmas carol you have been singing all your life
Brenda Payton was lead singer for the R&B group Brenda and the Tabulations
Phebe Blessington was an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who was killed in an auto accident shortly after her 30th birthday
Singer / songwriter / A&R man Richie Barrett’s final services and cremation were at Laurel Hill West, although he is not buried there.
And yes, I will play you samples of their work, and a lot more. Get ready for ear worms galore on this month's episode of "All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories
Tuesday Aug 15, 2023
BBB#023: Philadelphia’s First Gentleman - Henry Plumer McIlhenny
Tuesday Aug 15, 2023
Tuesday Aug 15, 2023
Andy Warhol considered him "the only person in town with glamour." The Philadelphia Art Alliance deemed him "the first gentleman of Philadelphia." Connoisseur Magazine named him one of the top ten art collectors of all time.
When Henry Plumer McIlhenny died in 1986, he left everything - an estimated $100M worth - to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he had served for 50 years as curator, trustee and chairman of the board. His collections were housed in both his magnificent Rittenhouse Square townhouse and at Glenveagh in Ireland, the largest privately-owned plot of land in the country. His parties were legendary. His friends were society's giants.
At his death, someone commented "I had always thought that no one was irreplaceable, but Henry is irreplaceable."
Fellow volunteer tour guide and historian Thomas Keels tells you of this remarkable man in the mid-August edition of “Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories.” Wherever you get your podcasts.
Tuesday Aug 01, 2023
ABC#053: Suited to a Tee - Golf Course Pioneers
Tuesday Aug 01, 2023
Tuesday Aug 01, 2023
Philadelphia has been an epicenter for golf since the 1890s. There are dozens of golf courses within an easy drive of the city, and a few in the city itself.
Ida Dixon is today recognized as the first woman golf course architect in the United States.
Hugh Wilson and Charles Thomas were two of the six architects who made up what is called The Philadelphia School. The two of them helped build 4 of the top ranked courses in the country.
Charles Baily met his final destiny on the 4th green of Merion East Cricket Club.
Plus, you’ll learn about cleeks and condors, heroic holes and featheries, Randolph Scott, Mary Queen of Scots, and a golf hole called the “Mae West.”
Even if you’re not a golfer, there are things for you to learn on today’s All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Suited to a Tee: Golf Course Pioneers.
Friday Jul 14, 2023
BBB #022: Shop Until Thou Droppest - Strawbridge & Clothier: The Early Years
Friday Jul 14, 2023
Friday Jul 14, 2023
As transportation in and around Philadelphia improved in the mid 19th century and the population exploded, merchants found more people clamoring for their wares. Two Quakers – Justus Clayton Strawbridge and Isaac Hallowell Clothier – joined forces and opened a small fabric store on the corner of 8th and Market in 1868. By the end of the century, there were thousands of employees and they had expanded severalfold and became the biggest dry goods store in the country. Here is how it happened.