Click here to subscribe today or Login.
WILKES-BARRE – A tour of a landmark cemetery Sunday gave residents a history lesson all the while helping an area teen work toward a high-ranking award and commemorate a native celebrity.
Roughly five dozen attendees followed the long, winding roads of the Hollenback Cemetery, listening to Holy Redeemer senior Maddie Lewis and her father, Bill, discuss about some of the most prominent historical figures of the Wyoming Valley while divulging facts about their final resting places.
Lewis created the tour to act as a fundraiser for her Girl Scout Gold Award project, which is to erect a historical marker for famed singer and Wilkes-Barre native Florence Foster Jenkins.
Much like the Boy Scout Eagle Scout award, the Gold Award is the highest honor an Girl Scout can earn. Several steps must be completed before earning the honor, with the final project based around making a difference in one’s local community, Lewis said.
The Pittston resident said she decided to use Florence Foster Jenkins as a part of her project due to her confidence and ability to empower those around her.
“For as much as she wasn’t talented as she would want, she was still very confident in herself and in her ability to excite an audience,” Lewis said. “She really was an example for women to go out and do what they want.”
The marker would cost approximately $2,050 to create, Lewis said, plus additional costs for a commemorative ceremony. Through the tour and future fundraisers, Lewis is planning to raise $2,500 for the project.
The two-hour tour featured about 60 of the cemetery’s permanent residents, offering life details about members of the Kirby, Slocum, Butler, Conyngham and Stegmaier families and more. The tour was led by Lewis’s father and Hollenback Cemetery board member Bill Lewis, who offered interesting facts about the cemetery itself.
Along with well-known families, Bill Lewis showed attendees a new marker unveiled just last week for the “Home for Friendless Children” as well as an introduction to the Jesse Fell, whose experiments with anthracite coal changed America.
“His experiments with anthracite coal literally led to the beginning of the America’s Industrial Revolution,” he said.
One interesting fact he offered throughout the tour was that an abundance of unused land remains at the cemetery, although the grounds are considered “full” and no more plots can be purchased.
This is because several families over-purchased plots, and although some family lineage is now ceased the cemetery is not allowed to resell the unused land.
When attendees reached the red-stone mausoleum of Florence Foster Jenkins, Lewis took the microphone from her father to talk about the singer’s life and contributions to the area.
Born in 1868, Florence Foster Jenkins was a prodigy pianist before an injury crushed her dreams. She would later turn to singing. And although she would be known to be a terrible singer, Foster Jenkins would ultimately sell out Carnegie Hall in 1944. She died just a few months later at the age of 78.
Her life story was later made into a feature film starring Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant in 2016. It was through the film that Lewis realized the basis of her project.
“Over the summer I saw the Florence Foster Jenkins movie and I didn’t know that she was born in Wilkes-Barre,” she said, adding her father later told her she was buried at Hollenback. “So I thought it would be great to have a historical marker for her for all of the things she’s done and the fame that she’s acclaimed.”
Plains resident Elaine Pawloski passes the Hollenback Cemetery on a regular basis, but up until Sunday she’s never been inside.
Pawloski attended the event with her daughter, Kara, after seeing it on Facebook and was more than happy to not only help Lewis but learn about local history, as well.
“It was phenomenal, it was way better than I thought it was going to be,” she said adding she hopes to return for more tours.
Lewis plans on creating another fundraiser to continue her efforts and plans on creating GoFundMe and Facebook pages so those interested can follow along with her progress.
