This week's big news is that I was invited to the City of Orlando City Clerk's Office monthly meeting where I was introduced to the rest of the team outside of the Greenwood Cemetery office to share what I've been working on. My supervisor requested that I prepare some talking points ahead of time. You can read those here. I'm extremely excited to report that during the meeting, my supervisor shared that the latest grant that Greenwood had applied for to create the digital cemetery project has been approved! Even more exciting was that she shared that some of MY work had been a part of making the grant happen! I will be meeting with them again soon to work out what the plan will be going forward now that there are funds, since it might mean some shifting of priorities and more options and/or restrictions. I'm so thrilled to be a part of this project! As we say in the Veterans Legacy Program, Semper Gumby (always flexible)!
Building off of last week’s post, I wanted to share some additional observations I made at the VLP institute that I would love to see applied at Greenwood. A big one was that using physical, tactile methods of interacting with the cemetery fostered a deep, and sometimes even emotional, connection for our teacher participants. We did this through headstone rubbings and a penny ceremony at the institute, which could both certainly be adapted for Greenwood. Headstone rubbings would best be done via guided workshops or for field trips, however, the penny ceremony might be something that could be adapted easily. For those that are unfamiliar, the penny ceremony is something that originated with the military as a way to honor the dead. You’ll often see pennies or other coins left on the headstones of Veterans in national cemeteries and I have occasionally seen them left in the military sections of Greenwood as well. Essentially, the idea is that if you didn’t serve with a Veteran but want to remember them, you leave a penny on their headstone. If you went to bootcamp with that Veteran, you leave a nickel. A dime shows that you served together and a quarter means that you were physically with the Veteran when they died. As you leave the coin, a crucial part of this ceremony is that you say the name of the person you are leaving the coin with. In some cases, this might be the first time someone has said that person’s name in a hundred years or more. This combination of a sensory experiences to memorialize someone is a powerful action that left several of our institute participants in tears. A wonderful part about the coins is that they are periodically collected by the national cemeteries and donated to various non-profit groups. I would love to see something like this adapted for use at Greenwood as it not only can help connect visitors on a personal level to those buried in the cemetery but can also help to give back to the community or fund cemetery projects.
Additionally, the penny ceremony could potentially be an option to solve one challenge that my supervisor wanted me to brainstorm solutions to. Each election day, the headstone of July Perry is decorated with “I voted” stickers in tribute to the Ocoee Massacre and Perry’s subsequent death when he attempted to vote in 1920. While a touching tribute to Mr. Perry, this has caused difficulties for Greenwood as the stickers are causing damage to his headstone. One option we discussed was to place interpretative signage with space for stickers to be placed that could handle that action more easily. Another idea we talked about was some sort of virtual campaign that could allow visitors to share their action of voting in honor of Mr. Perry on social media. However, I think it might be even more beneficial to encourage visitors to leave a penny AND post their action on social media. Not only would this preserve his headstone and generate donations, it could also educate the public about the Ocoee Massacre and promote public visitation to Greenwood.
Another rather exciting idea that I had builds off of Clio’s “Time Capsule” feature that allows for an augmented reality style interactive landscape that visually transports visitors to that same place at a different time. Something I would very much like to do is to recreate as much of Greenwood and the surrounding neighborhood in a digital format as possible. This is of particular interest to me for the Jonestown neighborhood of which the newer portion of Greenwood is built on. The history of that neighborhood is an important story for Orlando residents, however, very few people that I’ve spoken with are aware that Jonestown even existed! My search for images that theoretically should have been taken by the Orlando Housing Authority prior to the demolition of the Jonestown neighborhood has thus far not borne any fruit. However, I am not one to give up easily and I have a few ideas in mind on where to look next.
Along with the use of AR technology, it might also be possible (though extremely ambitious given Greenwood’s size!) to create a virtual reality Greenwood Cemetery that could contain thousands and thousands of histories. Dr. Amy Giroux, of the Center for Humanities and Digital Research at UCF has done just that with St. Augustine National Cemetery. I was able to experience her VR version of that cemetery during the VLP institute and I think this project holds immense promise! In her version, you can approach individual headstones and interact with elements that display information on the Veterans buried in the cemetery. I can envision something like this with Greenwood that could potentially display pictures of individuals with details about their lives and their role in Orlando’s history. This could be a whole new way for visitors to experience cemeteries! I think VR technology has tremendous potential in creating new ways to remember the dead.
Next week, I hope to have some updates about the grant and if all goes to plan, I should be able to finally begin the writing phase of the tour creation.
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