I've long admired the work of journalist Lisa Colangelo, so I was thrilled  to give her a tour of these two fabulous cemeteries.

Explore the secrets and hidden history of Queens' Calvary and Saint John cemeteries 

Alexandra Mosca, author and funeral director, takes amNewYork on a tour of the sprawling cemeteries.

Explore the secrets and hidden history of Queens' Calvary and Saint John cemeteries Alexandra Mosca, author and funeral director, takes amNewYork on a tour of the sprawling cemeteries.

Happy 100th Birthday Leonard Bernstein

Stubenbord - Sutherland Families

Green-Wood Cemetery's Stubenbord-Sutherland monument features a seated mourning figure holding a sprig of ivy. The granite monument is rose-colored and semi-circle in design.  The Sutherland family was active in Brooklyn politics, while the Stubenbords owned a popular Coney Island hotel. 

The Proudest Yankee

                                            In honor of opening day at Yankee Stadium.

Alfred Manuel "Billy" Martin had a distinguished career in baseball. The second baseman for the Yankees was a contemporary of Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Yogi Berra, and later became the team's manager. In that role, he led the team to a number of victories. The outspoken Martin's public feuds, most notably with team owner, George Steinbrenner, were legendary. Martin was killed in a car accident on Christmas day in 1989. After a funeral Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral, attended by many former teammates, he was buried in New York's Gate of Heaven Cemetery, nearby the grave of Babe Ruth. These words are etched upon his monument: "I may not have been the greatest Yankee to put on the uniform, but I was the proudest

Archibald Gracie IV: A Titanic Hero

Archibald Gracie IV was instrumental in saving the lives of a number of fellow RMS Titanic passengers. Gracie, too, survived and began work on a book about that tragic night. Sadly, Gracie died eight months later from the effects of his ordeal in the sea. His book, titled "Titanic: A Survivor's Story" was published posthumously. Gracie is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, surrounded by many family graves. The Gracie ancestral home serves as the New York City mayoral residence

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The closing words to The Great Gatsby are etched into the slab in front of the monument. Despite the disappointing initial sales of the book, Max Perkins (Fitzgerald's editor at Scribner) wrote him: "The amount of meaning you get into a sentence, the dimension and intensity of the impressions you make a paragraph carry, are most extraordinary."

Rose

One of my favorite monuments in Calvary Cemetery is that of 25-year-old Rose, who died in 1927