Social Media in the Cemetery

Today on the web I learned about Timeless Footsteps. It's a company that, for as low as $50, can make a special card or plaque for a gravestone called a "footprint," which can be read by a "smart" phone.

"Footprints from Timeless Footsteps are attractive business card-sized placards you affix to a headstone or memorial. The Footprint includes a code that links visitors to the memorial with your family member's life story and photos on a beautifully designed web page. You can link with a smart phone, a net book, or any other internet-enabled device." (From their website.)

Aside from a few doubts I have about Timeless Footsteps, I think it's a great idea and a positive move in a new and important direction.  Websites like Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com have done so much to honour our dead.  So often while visiting cemeteries I've wished there were some way to tell, just by looking at someone's gravestone, whether their grave has been photographed or documented online where everyone can see it.  Or wondered if a someone's gravestone and the information thereon could be the key to open someone's "brick wall!"  Is this grave, this person's death, known?  We all seem to have folks in our family tree about whom we have to say "I just don't know what happened to him.  He's in the 1920 and 1925 census, but I just have to assume he died before 1930.  His wife and kids are there in the 1930 census, and it says "widowed" after her name."   If we could see that little "Footprint" card affixed to the gravestone, we would know that the person had at least some kind of online presence and information which was sharable.

When I tried the sample "footprint" provided for a Mr. Daniel James Lords on the Timeless Footsteps page, I did notice there were links on his page to other pages about him on other online sites.

The service sounds nice and quick.  Once you join Timeless Footsteps and pay for your online memorial, you are supposed to receive your "Footprint" in just a few days.  It comes with strong adhesive so you can apply it yourself.  If it's defaced, stolen or damaged in any way, the company will just send you a new one.

I'm hesitant to criticize it, since I'm so glad to see some cemetery social media of any kind.  But the obvious question seems to be "If someone's there in the cemetery with an internet device anyway, couldn't they just look up the person's name online?  Wouldn't the name come up somewhere, whether it's a recent obit in a newspaper, or as a name in someone's tree?"

Maybe.  Or maybe not.  It would probably not come up as neatly and quickly as this Timeless Footsteps would.  Findagrave.com's record might just have the same info you're faced with -- the gravestone.  Ancestry.com is expensive and requires log-in.  Many newspapers require log-in and some charge money for on-line viewing.  

We need to remember, too, that some people are not the sleuths we are.  We would find the challenge enjoyable, to find out more about the person beneath the gravestone.  We would know about the online sites, or about the newspapers in which to search the decedent's name.  Not everyone's as curious or knowledgeable as we are.  

Timeless Footsteps seems like an easy, affordable way to use the internet in the cemetery to find out more about people.  Sometimes the headstone alone says so little.  I remember being stunned by one gravestone, in our own Eastside Cemetery:  STUART AWBREY.  That's it -- not even any dates.  He was once one of the most famous, brilliant people in town.  Editor of The Hutchinson News from 1965 to 1979 and "a writer of unusual grace."  He was also my mother's (Dorothy Melland's) boss from 1973 to 1979.  She loved him and when she'd come from her day of writing stories at The News...she always had something good or something stirring to say about Stu Awbrey -- every day.  And there was his small, flat, grey stone crowded in with so many others just like his own -- staring STUART AWBREY right back at me.  Yet really saying nothing at all about him or about anything he'd done.

Some cars wear more words about themselves than our gravestones do.  "Chevrolet.  Suburban.  EFI (Electronic Fuel Ignition).  Silverado.  [Sold by] Carsmart, Inc of Lawrence, KS."  Oh, and a bumper sticker which alerts "Official Harp Transport Vehicle" and a window decal which boasts "Made in America," plus various other internal stickers and plaques which describe when the last oil change was, what the VIN is, and where the driver is allowed to park on the KU campus.  Our car says more about itself than our grandparent's grave does!

Plus, most gravestones have plenty of blank space on them.  I've often wished I could add something with a piece of chalk or even a stout post-it note:  "This woman moved here in a covered wagon!  She had beautiful auburn hair which tumbled past her knees!  When she married, she had a twenty-inch waist!  And she loved the poetry of Shelley and Keats!"  Timeless Footsteps could serve as an electronic embellishment. 

And speaking of English poet John Keats:  he died from TB at age 25, assuming he and his poetry would be soon forgotten forever.  His epitaph, of his own choosing, greets the graveyard visitor with "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."  

                                                                         Too humble.

Personally, I'll wait for a stand-alone gravestone which anyone can see, no hand-held smartphone or laptop lugged to the cemetery necessary.  I envision a push-button gravestone with a flat screen behind plexiglass or plate glass.  "To read family tree, press green button."  "To view family photographs, press red button."  To read favourite recipes, press yellow button," and so on.  The stone's south side would feature a solar panel for generating the necessary power.  An enclosed speaker could play special music, or even a message. 

I'm for anything that would make cemeteries a more interesting place for people to visit. 

Cordelia Brown