All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories Joe Lex

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". 

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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”.

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. 

Philadelphia has always been the magazine-publishing capital of the United States.  It reached its pinnacle in the 1840s, 50s, and 60s when three popular magazines – Graham’s, Peterson's, and Lippincott's - all came into existence. 
 
Graham’s was the best, even though it only lasted a few years.  George Rex Graham would wheedle articles out of Longfellow and Thoreau, and published many stories by his co-editor Edgar Allan Poe.
 
Peterson’s magazine followed shortly and lasted a few years longer.  Charles Peterson was a lifelong friend of Graham who started his own magazine and was ready to hand it off to his son, Howard, who mysteriously disappeared during a weekend trip down the shore.  What his wife did at the time of her death 31 years later will touch your heart.
 
Joshua Ballinger Lippincott was a late comer with his Lippincott’s magazine, but it lasted longer than the others and served as the bedrock for the famed Lippincott Publishing Company which went through several generations of family leadership.
 
George Rex Graham, five members of the Peterson family, and several members of the Lippincotts are featured on this month’s episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #062 – Three More Philadelphia Magazines: Graham's, Peterson's, and Lippincott's. 
 

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. 

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.