Talking To My Mom While Visiting The Nguyens & Ducs In Fort Worth's Mount Olivet Cemetery

This morning at 9 I had to be at this place called Inwesco in one of Fort Worth's industrial blight zones. This particular blight zone is in the Sylvania Avenue / N.E. 28th Street area.

Just to the south of this particular industrial zone is the Mount Olivet Cemetery. I have heard mention made of this cemetery, but had not previously had reason to make a visit.

So, when I left Inwesco I entered the Mount Olivet Cemetery and had myself a walk around.

This is a very well kept burial ground. I have been to many a burial ground. My Grandma Jones, that being my dad's mom, liked to wander around cemeteries. I remember Mom and Dad bringing Grandma over to Ellensburg whilst I was going to Central Washington University. We took Grandma to the Roslyn Cemetery, which now that I am typing that and thinking about it, that cemetery is a long ways from Ellensburg, particularly if Mom and Dad and Grandma had just driven over the mountains to Ellensburg for the day. But I know it was a one day deal.

I digress.

The Roslyn Cemetery is this sprawling deal, on multiple hills. It is divided into something like 30 different burial grounds. Very segregated. For example, separate areas for Chinese, Mexican, African-Americans, Croatians, Germans, Serbians, Irish, Canadians and I forget what else. The various burial plots are maintained to various levels. Some of the headstones are elaborate, including photos somehow embedded in glass. Epic epitaphs on a lot of the headstones. Some telling a sad story. One of the burial grounds was the final resting place for those who died in one of America's worst coal mining disasters.

I have been to some interesting burial grounds in Texas. The cemetery next to Pioneer Plaza, in Dallas, comes to mind. Interesting headstones with interesting epitaphs, graves dating back to way before the War of Northern Aggression and the biggest Confederate memorial statue I have seen.

Mount Olivet Cemetery was nice, but it seemed sort of new. There must be an older cemetery in Fort Worth with graves dating back much further than I saw today, with old style headstones and epic epitaphs.

I did find the gravesites and elaborate monuments of several people of Vietnamese descent to be interesting. One of them had embedded photos, way bigger than what I have seen in Rosyln.

That is that of which I speak you see here.

The picture you see at the top was taken whilst I sat on a bench set in polished marble, talking to my mom. While talking to mom I looked up at the area where I'd seen headstones for people of Vietnamese ancestry, with names like Pham, Nguyen and Duc, to see that family of Ducs you see above, paying their respects.

By that pond you see in the background was a sign warning burial ground visitors not to fish or swim in the pond. I imagine without that sign there was a serious problem with a lot of unwanted fishermen and swimmers....