Della Vecchia Funeral Home brings us to Southington

On the invitation from Della Vecchia Funeral Home, Reflections made two stops in the community of Southington. First hosting the exhibit at their facility in town and then sharing with the Mortuary students of Briarwood College. It was a very unique show full of wonderful visitors. The local fire department came out and brought their fire trucks. Now that was a first to have a firemen leave his boots at the door. They enjoyed it so much a second truck came to visit.

This is will long be a story we tell, remember when the fire truck came to visit.

Bailey Funeral Home Celebrate 125 Years

As a wonderful show of thanks for 125 years of community support, Bailey Funeral Home of Plainville, CT held an open house and reception that was open to the public. To augment their event they invited Reflections to join them in their celebration. This funeral home has deep roots in the community and the grandchildren of the original owners were there to enjoy the honors. More then 200 guests passed through our doors and we were filled with the comments from a close knit community. We feel a great privilege to have visited such an established funeral home with so many years of continued service.

Indianapolis

Reflections finished out the summer in Indianapolis at two great locations. First was American Legion Post 64, hosting the kickoff of the Legacy Run, a 1,200 mile motorcycle ride to raise money for American Legion Scholarship programs.

Many Legion members and ride participants toured the exhibit, and were especially interested in the tributes to the men and women in uniform.

After the good times at the American Legion, Reflections crossed town to the National Cemetery Administration Conference. Set up at the Indianapolis Hilton between the Capitol building and Monument Circle, Reflections was in quite an official setting. With the excellent help of officer McAtee, traffic was routed around the expandable from 9am-6pm so that conference goers could experience the ways in which Reflections is educating the public about funeral customs.

Dream Cruise

One of the great end-of-summer traditions in Southeast Michigan is the Woodward Dream Cruise. Car enthusiasts of all kinds flock to Woodward Avenue to see the impromptu parade of classic cars that meanders between Pontiac and 8 Mile. Halfway along the route, Reflections was open to visitors Friday evening and all day Saturday in the parking lot of Peabody's Restaurant in Birmingham. A special sign was created detailing the some of the well known residents of the many cemeteries along Woodward Avenue.

Our host for the day was Lynch Funeral Homes, a great supporter of the Reflections exhibit. They brought with them their pristine 1939 Packard hearse, so the car enthusiasts had a special treat. Pat even ran into a featured member of Reflections next to the Packard!

The folks at Peabody's were also operating a lift to give people a better view of the crowds and cars below, so we took the opportunity to get a good shot of the whole amazing scene.

Early August in Michigan

The first Monday of the month took Reflections to Cobo Hall in Detroit for the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association Annual National Convention. Reflections was specifically the guest of the 100 Black Women in Funeral Service. It is always great to do a show indoors where guests will not be deterred by bad weather, and in this case was especially great since hundreds of people were in attendance for multiple events and educational sessions.


Cobo is a massive space right down town - the truck matched it pretty well in scale!



About a week after the rewarding few days at Cobo, Reflections headed a little way west to the charming historic town of Chelsea, Michigan, where it was the guest of Cole Funeral Home. As we have seen in so many other communities, Cole is a very active presence in Chelsea, and hosted an open house to let everyone learn a little more of what they are about. They also had on display two beautiful antique hearses to add to the sense of history in the culture of funeral customs.

Chelsea, Michigan is also home to the famous Purple Rose Theater, founded by Michigan's own Jeff Daniels. The play they are currently putting on, called Wake, features a mortician as the main character! Several of the event attendees visited Reflections and then headed over to the theater. The lucky ones also stopped at Chelsea's famous Common Grille for dinner.

Wake is in its world premier run and is on through August 22nd at the Purple Rose Theater.

http://www.purplerosetheatre.org/plays/wake.shtml

Fraser and Fowlerville, MI

On July 19th, Reflections was a feature of the City of Fraser Annual Picnic & Parade. Fallman & Walsh Funeral Home has been a participant in the Fraser community for many years, and made arrangements to have Reflections out at the event to celebrate their corner of southeast Michigan. Jim Walsh of Fallman & Walsh Funeral Home was there with his vintage 36 Auburn Funeral Coach, and dressed in period clothes of that time. With Jim as our added attraction we had lots of interest in the exhibit.
The trailer, with its impressive graphic wrap, became a favorite backdrop for other participants in the parade to have their picture taken. Jim was always standing proudly by!

When the parade began, Jim led the way distributing flags to families along the parade route.

After the parade, the exhibit was parked and opened to the public. Many visitors came through in a few short hours, and Jim had a chance too share some of the historic and educational aspects his profession with the community.

The weekend after the Fraser event, Reflections was down the road to the west at the Fowlerville Family Fair for the fair's Veterans and Government Day. Amidst the musical acts and animals, the Reflections exhibit gave people a place to pause and reflect on the ways that we honor those who served our country.

Although Reflections was only out at the Fair for one day, and a bit of a rainy one at that, a lot of excitement and interest was shown by visitors.

Reflections Celebrates Independence

Michigan likes to start celebrating early, so Reflections' Independence Day engagements began the last weekend in June with 3 days and over 3,000 visitors at the Stars and Stripes Festival in historic downtown Mt. Clemens, MI. Once again, Traci Lee was at the event, and provided this report:

"The Reflections trailer was set up on Thursday morning just outside of the main food court area and across the street from one of the main restaurants in downtown Mt. Clemens. We were also close to one of the smaller music stages.
The event was very well-attended. From what the festival organizer said, there was 150,000 people on Friday and he had expected about 500,000 people to attend the event over the entire weekend.
Because our location was in a very good spot, we saw a lot of people throughout the festival. We had a very wide variety of people of all ages that came through the exhibit. A few WWII veterans, who had just come back from Washington DC, came through the exhibit and they enjoyed it. Since we have had many events in the area, we had a lot of people come through that had already seen the exhibit and spoke of seeing it at Kaul's funeral home or in the Grosse Pointe area.

As the weekend progressed, we had people come in telling us that they had heard that the exhibit was very cool (and not just because of the air conditioning)!"

For the actual 4th of July, Reflections was on display in Wyandotte, MI. This downriver community has a real small-town feel, with a true sense of community. Their Independence Day Parade took place at 10am, and Reflections was parked right along the parade route for visitors to view before, during, and after the parade.

Even with a brief show, Reflections saw over 300 visitors in Wyandotte.

A very family-oriented event, the parade was a great location for Reflections, and since it was early in the day, the drivers had time to see some fireworks that evening!