2024 01 17 - FL - Sarasota

Picture: Street sign, Sarasota Memorial

This was our first park of the day. At this cemetery there was an open office and they pointed me in the correct area with key things to look for. This cemetery has 20,000 graves so directions are required.

Even with directions, my wife finally got out to help me. I had started one row from where I should have and walked away from the area instead of walking closer to where I needed to be. We were only looking for one grave today.

Picture: Sarasota National Cemetery

We had the grave location for this cemetery so we did not have to stop at the office. 30,000+ graves so far. Many times larger than the one in St Petersburg.

This one, like most larger national cemeteries, has a kiosk where you can look up grave information and print out a map. It also has clean rest rooms which we did make use of.

(Also saw some large turtles. But no 'gators)

Picture: Street sign for the church.

We could not see a cemetery so I parked and walked to a little secluded area. In there there were paths and statues and a few signs that said who donated what but I could not find any graves.

The church was being worked on so I had to walk around to find a way in.

Once inside, I saw a man of the cloth.

I asked him about a cemetery, 'no, there is not one here.'

Then I mentioned seeing plaques on Find-a-Grave ... then he took me over to the back wall of the church. Nothing like I have seen or heard of before. Some members of that church choose to be 'buried' at the church.

I am writing this a month after the fact, so I do not remember if they had their ashes spread in the secluded area or if they were buried in a biodegradable way. But either way, the only mark they were leaving was the three inch plaque on the wall.

The plaque is inside the church rather than in a window or something that can be viewed from the outside.

Picture: Gulf Pines in Englewood FL

This cemetery was six miles, but 15 minutes from the last cemetery. We didn't realize it until we were leaving that the east-west roads would take even longer than back tracking most of those 15 minutes back to the freeway.

This cemetery has a little over 10,000 graves so it is not as huge as some. But to make things easier for us today, the markers we are looking for are on a wall and they have very few of those.

We looked at about half of the walls before finding the one we want. There are markings on the grounds, but we were not able to find the logic of them and didn't have a location for the grave we were looking for.

Looking at the picture that was posted on Find-a-Grave, we could tell that the grave was likely high on the wall because of the angle the picture was taken at and it was.