Interview With The Biographer Of The Dead, Podcaster Dr. Joe Lex

 

1.       What is your book, All Bones Considered: 52 Laurel Hill Women, about? All Bones Considered: 52 Laurel Hill Women is a collection of short biographies about extraordinary women, from the colonial era to the present, who are buried at Laurel Hill East in Philadelphia and Laurel Hill West in Bala Cynwyd. Each chapter tells of a woman’s life, but also puts her within the broader history of the city and the nation. What did the world look like around her? What obstacles did she face? In many cases, why has her name faded from public memory? The book introduces you to Founding Mother Esther DeBerdt Reed; Anna Jarvis, founder of Mother’s Day; Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, the first Black woman in the United States to earn a PhD in economics; Mary Ann Lee, America’s first prima ballerina; Christine Wetherill Stevenson, founder of both Plays & Players Theatre in Philadelphia and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. My goal is to introduce readers to women who deserve far more attention than they’ve received. I hope this book sparks curiosity and encourages deeper exploration.

 

2.       How did a retired medical doctor and university professor become a podcaster who focuses on retelling the stories of those buried in local cemeteries? After nearly five decades in emergency medicine beginning as a combat medic in Vietnam and retiring as a professor at Temple University, I left a career with only a vague idea of what would come next. That changed when I went on a guided tour of Laurel Hill Cemetery. It made me realize what I truly missed, even more than the patients, was the research and teaching that had always energized me. I took a course and became a cemetery tour guide. I soon discovered far too many fascinating stories to share during a single tour. So, I started a podcast, and then a second one, both dedicated to retelling the lives of those interred in local cemeteries. After a few years I had hundreds of scripts. Turning them into books seemed the logical next step. This journey from medicine to guided tours, to podcasting, and ultimately writing allowed me to continue exploring, teaching, and sharing remarkable stories in a new way.

 

3.       Why did you choose to focus your book only on women? That’s easy. Women’s stories are inherently more compelling because they have to be. In an era when a woman might find her name in print only at birth or marriage, it took exceptional determination for her to earn a doctorate in chemistry, author a renowned astronomy book, or drive a golf ball over 300 yards. Or even to write her own story. Men, especially wealthy white men, had countless career paths open to them – business, politics, medicine, law. Women often had to forge their own unique futures. Their journeys were rarely traditional, as they are the ones who began the traditions. Sometimes their creativity just to survive was nothing short of extraordinary. That drive and ingenuity is what makes their narratives so fascinating and worthy of focus.

 

4.       You wrote that you hope others around the country would undertake similar projects, to go to their local historic cemetery and hear their stories of those who came before us. How should one go about doing just that? If you want to dig into local cemetery history, having unbridled passion for the topic definitely helps, not to mention lots of free time and a bit of spare cash for books and online references. Being a little obsessive doesn't hurt, either! Start by checking out any tours at your local historic cemetery; they're a great way to get your bearings. Next, chat up the old-timers in the cemetery office. Let them know what you're up to and ask for their stories-they usually have plenty, and might even share old archives or scrapbooks. Don't forget your local historical society and librarians; they're goldmines for information. Just be ready to run into dead ends. Seriously, I found about 75% of my first leads didn't pan out. Stick with it and keep asking questions!

 

5.       How did you go about selecting the women that you chose to write about? I went through the scripts from a hundred or so podcasts and found my favorite 52 women. I compared them alongside my favorite 52 men - who was more interesting? While the men included the expected authors, mayors, polar explorers, an Indian fighter or two, and a few scoundrels, the women's group stood out with individuals like a founder of her own religion, the inventor of signal flares, a Hollywood gossip columnist, and a Black Communist who meticulously videotaped everything on television for more than 30 years. There’s also been a recent trend in major publications like The New York Times and Times of London, to publish obituaries for influential women they previously overlooked.

 

6.       America is turning 250 years old this year and Philadelphia feels like its birthplace. Does your book not only reveal the history of a city but of a nation? I would certainly like to think so, but semiquincentennial visitors may feel otherwise. To be truthful, Laurel Hill is not the place to visit founding fathers and mothers, although we have a few including Charles Thomson, Joseph & Esther Read, and Declaration signer Thomas McKean. Old City, especially Christ Church burial ground, is where hundreds of thousands of tourists will get their Philadelphia graveyard encounter and drop a now-obsolete penny on Ben Franklin's grave, ironically across the street from the US Mint, which they should also visit. But if you want the history of Philadelphia from the mid-19th century onward, this would be a pretty good place to start.

 

7.       Laurel Hill East was one of the nation’s first garden cemeteries when it opened in 1836. The population of the cemetery is a small city – 75,000 – and includes 33,000 monuments. How does it differ from Laurel Hill West? They were founded by the same man - John Jay Smith - a third of a century apart. Both sit high above the Schuylkill River, as Smith was somewhat of an aquaphobe. They are across the river from one another in separate cities and counties. Laurel Hill West has about 300 family mausoleums, several decorated with stained glass from the Louis Comfort Tiffany studios. While there are military men in both cemeteries, East has a preponderance of Civil War veterans, while West has a lot more Great War veterans. East is squeezed into 78 acres and is almost completely full, while West has lots of open space and a park-like feel. One major issue with West is inadequate public transportation, although there is a rail-to-trail public entrance, and a segment of road through the cemetery connects Montgomery County with Philadelphia County.

 

8.       Most people are concerned about what their legacy will be, and of what others will say about them if their name is even spoken of at all. Are you obsessed about what your tombstone will say? The opposite. I am a retired physician who learned anatomy on the body of a volunteer. The least I can do is return the favor. First dibs go to any salvageable organs, and then for teaching purposes, even if that involves a body farm. If there are cremains, a mulch pile will do. My legacy is a national teaching award named for me and the hundreds if not thousands of people around the world that I helped teach the art and science of emergency medicine. Plus, a podcast that’s been downloaded more than 85,000 times. But if I had an inscription, it would be a combination of two that I have seen, both at Laurel Hill West. Abram Winegardner Harris has on his stone simply “Scholar – Teacher – Leader – Friend” and lawyer / legal scholar Henry Sandwith Drinker has a line from Shakespeare: “The day shall not be up so soon as I / To try the fair adventure of tomorrow.”

 

9.       Is it hard to put each woman’s life into perspective, given they each lived during such different eras, when society’s laws, mores, and habits varied greatly from each other? Definitely. It's a real eye-opener. When I dive into the rhythms of life from another time, I realize just how unfamiliar and complicated things were for these women. Just picture the sights, sounds, and smells at 4th and Chestnut back in the late 1800s. Think about Martha Coston, just 21 years old, suddenly a widow with four kids and no safety net in 1847. Everything about daily life, what people wore, how they worked, who got to tell the stories, was shaped by rules and customs totally different from what we know now. I get that there are things I'll never fully understand, especially since I've grown up in a completely different world. Even so, trying to fill in those blanks and imagine life from their point of view helps me connect with their stories, even if I'll never have all the answers.

 

10.   Some of your stories share lessons and transmit values. What life advice can we obtain from the dead? Let me borrow a trick from the historians for this one. They’re the folks who remind us that those who’ve passed aren’t just footnotes. They’re still part of our story. When we look at their diaries, letters, old keepsakes, and records, we get a peek into what mattered to them, what they struggled with, and what dreams they chased. Sometimes, their stories warn us what not to do; other times, they light the way forward. We pick up humility from lost fortunes, courage from people who stood up for what’s right, and learn about the cost of intolerance from the tragedies we all remember. By checking out how past generations faced tough times and searched for meaning, historians help us see our own decisions as pieces of a bigger picture, and they nudge us to be thoughtful, kind, and remember we’re all in this together.

 

About The Author: Joe Lex retired in 2016 after 45+ years in emergency medicine which he started as a combat medic in Viet Nam and ended as a professor of Emergency Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia. When he took a tour of the historic Laurel Hill Cemetery, founded in 1836, he realized that the role of a cemetery docent seemed to suit his personality. After a year or so of giving tours, he decided that both cemeteries, East and West, really needed a podcast to talk about their amazing inhabitants. The result was "All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories", followed a couple of years later by "Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories." For seven years he was the producer, researcher, and announcer for a weekly radio show on WPPM- Philadelphia.  One of his podcasts is now ranked the Number 1 Philadelphia History Podcast: https://podcast.feedspot.com/philadelphia_history_podcasts/. For more information, please see: https://allbonesconsidered.com/

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This award-winning blog has generated over 5,400,000 page views. With 5,500+ posts over the past 14 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs  by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2026.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

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