People can symbolically reach out to lost loved ones via two art installations at Dunmore Cemetery walking tours Oct. 4 and 11.
They are decidedly not ghost tours or spooky season events, said Julie Esty, director of the tour group, the Dearly Departed Players. Instead, the stories include a secret Masonic message, an unfinished song, Green Stamps and an enormous pair of jeans that symbolizes the area’s labor history. The jeans are headed to the Levi Strauss company archives.
In addition to the tour of the large mid-1800s cemetery, there will be other elements, including some that touch on grief, art and more local history.
‘Unsaid/Unsent’ mailbox exhibit by Katherine Williams Mullin (COURTESY OF THE EVERHART MUSEUM)
Charlie Siebert, David Byers, Laura Doyle and Jon Doyle of the Dearly Departed Players. (COURTESY OF THE DEARLY DEPARTED PLAYERS)
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‘Unsaid/Unsent’ mailbox exhibit by Katherine Williams Mullin (COURTESY OF THE EVERHART MUSEUM)
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“Unsaid/Unsent”
Peckville artist and funeral director Katherine Williams Mullin will install her artwork, “Unsaid/Unsent.” It is a mailbox fashioned from cardboard and paper and filled with postcards that can be written to lost loved ones and deposited there.
“Words that were never said — whether it’s apologies, or gratitude not expressed, or sometimes it’s just something that we can’t say at the time,” she said.
The temporary, renewable nature of the materials is deliberate and symbolic, Williams Mullin said. “You give something, and it might come back to you in a different way, or it might just be something that’s let go.” She likes to use renewable materials in her art.
She is making a fresh, larger version of the one that was a popular part of the “Repurposed Art” exhibit at the Everhart Museum this past winter. It drew a “constant stream of people” at the opening reception, said curator James Lansing.
“Whenever there was an opening, they would go and fill out one of the postcards,” Lansing said.
Williams Mullin may someday find a way to display the postcards, so messages should be anonymous.
“Wind phone”
The mailbox joins a similar installation on the grounds that has been part of previous tours. The “wind phone” is an out-of-service landline phone. Mourners are invited to place a symbolic call to a loved one, with the words carried to them on the wind. There is an option to write their messages on notepads that are eventually gathered and respectfully burned.
Wind phones are found worldwide. They first came to attention in Japan following a pair of natural disasters in 2011.
A similar project in the Back Mountain
Another artist, Tara Yamelski, installed a wind phone on the Judith & David Rimple Loop Trail in Dallas last September. Notes left behind suggest that at least 100 people, probably more, have used it, she said.
Buried in the cemetery
The Dunmore tour’s cast of characters has changed over the 20-plus years of the tour, with about a dozen costumed volunteer actors giving first-person accounts graveside.
One stop will be the grave of a magician, portrayed by another magician, who may demonstrate his skills.
The tour always includes a tribute to veterans.
“Nothing against the famous folks,” Esty said, but the tour also stops at humble graves of ordinary people. “A lot of them are people who had very interesting lives that you might have never heard of. Because the reality is all of us are very interesting, and all of us do wonderful things. Just because we’re not famous doesn’t mean that we don’t have a story to tell.”
Getting there
The tours are at 2 p.m. The cemetery is located at 400 Church St.
Comfortable shoes are recommended for the two-hour, rain-or-shine walking tour.
The group suggests arriving early to find parking and view exhibitors’ displays.
There are no reservations needed. The tour is free, but donations will be accepted.
Sign language services will be available Oct. 11.
If you go
What: The annual Dunmore Cemetery Tour by the Dearly Departed Players, based on historical research and presented by volunteer actors. It is free, but donations are accepted.
When: Sundays, Oct. 4 and 11, both at 2 p.m., rain or shine.
Where: Dunmore Cemetery, 400 Church St., Dunmore.
Information: Do not call the cemetery office. Information is available on social media.