Congratulations to Glendora our featured volunteer of the month for September, 2021! We’d like to recognize her for her contributions to the site and for helping the Find a Grave community.

Glendora grew up going to cemeteries on the weekends with extended family members. Visiting and documenting graves was a regular pastime in her youth. As she has always been interested in family history, she was the one who inherited a big blue binder from her Dad’s second cousin that included names and dates of ancestors on her paternal side. She joined Ancestry and started adding the information. While working on her Ancestry tree, she was led to Find a Grave®. She explored the site and when she didn’t find the paternal side of her family listed or her own family cemetery she decided to join and add these memorials and cemetery.  Since then she’s added all that she could – about 70 cemeteries and nearly 40,000 memorials. She told us about one of her favorite cemeteries.

“My favorite local cemetery is Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. I was born in Louisville and have lived here all my life. It is a beautiful and peaceful place where you can easily get lost in the natural beauty of the monuments. Here are six photos that I’ve taken at Cave Hill which are my favorites. One is for Ida May Langnehs in the children’s section at Cave Hill. She catches my eye every time I drive through and I’ve searched and searched trying to find out who she is but to no avail.”

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She spends a lot of time at Cave Hill Cemetery. One day she met another contributor and her sister who were very knowledgeable about the cemetery. They became fast friends and since then they’ve met at the cemetery a few times. While the sisters venture out to find and fulfill photo requests, Glendora stays by the roadside photographing and adding those new memorials to Find a Grave. She has undergone some health challenges since she first started on Find a Grave. She used to work full time and do Find a Grave during lunch and on weekends, but now she contributes to the community in other ways.

Glendora uses Facebook and decided to start a group for Find a Grave where people could gather and help each other. She’s had the pleasure of meeting many other members and shared that some have “become very close and important friends” in her life. Many people have joined this Find a Grave Facebook group and she has spent years helping people learn the ins and outs of the site. Glendora says that “it’s all worth it to help people find someone when they have been searching for a long time.” Over the years other people have helped her with the group and there are now multiple administrators. Many different Facebook groups exist that are built around people’s interest in searching for burial locations and their interest in Find a Grave.

Glendora has also contributed 178 biographies for famous memorials. She finds it very interesting to learn about pieces of history that she never would have known if not researching these people. 

Our accolades to you for your extraordinary work on the site, in cemeteries, and for the community! We are so glad that you are a Find a Grave member and appreciate all your efforts in recording and memorializing those that have passed.

We welcome your suggestions for Volunteer of the Month. If you’d like to submit a volunteer for consideration in future months, please send an email with details of their work to feedback@findagrave.com.