Q+A With Barry Fleig
Written by: Maya Durfee O'Brien
Edited by: Talia Wright
For the past 20 years, Chicago native Barry Fleig has been compiling a database of burials and cemeteries in Chicago and Cook County. What started out as a hobby for Fleig quickly turned into something more. His list of Chicago cemeteries totals 274 in Cook County and Chicago proper. He details his findings in blog posts on his website Chicago and Cook County Cemeteries and says he gets at least one person a month who will reach out to him in relation to a post on his blog. He has even helped people locate where their loved ones were buried by using death certificates. Most notably, Fleig helped rediscover and identify the Cook County Cemetery––an abandoned cemetery where over 38,000 people were buried.
What originally sparked your interest in researching cemeteries?
BARRY FLEIG: I used to go to church on Sunday like a lot of people, and I was dating a lady out in River Forest. After church, we’d have a little breakfast with whomever and then we would get into the car. It was a cheap date––we’d drive to a cemetery and we’d poke around for the afternoon.
I wanted to explore what makes these cemeteries so interesting. They’re very cool and I’ve been hooked. There’s no end to it.
What made you continue searching through cemeteries?
FLEIG: Cemeteries are fascinating. Yeah, they’re a bunch of dead people, but they tell us where
we came from [and] who we are. Even if we don’t know the people, they tell us about the history of the city. They’re almost like a library in a way.
What do you want people to know about your findings?
FLEIG: I want to suck in people that don’t know cemeteries all that well. I’ve got a core of
people that love cemeteries like I do, but those guys I’ve done already. I want to stick a fork in
the new people, the public.
When I do a cemetery talk I ask, “How many people like cemeteries?” And they all raise their
hands. When I ask, “How many people know about cemeteries?” I only get half, and the rest of
them are there because they’re curious. When I ask, “How many people are afraid of
cemeteries?” I get one or two people. But by the end of the talk, I win them all over and they
want more, and that’s cool.
What is your favorite cemetery in Cook County?
FLEIG: I bounce around a lot, but this week it’s Jewish Waldheim. There’s 300 separate
cemeteries in Jewish Waldheim. That’s out in Forest Park, and because each little synagogue or
burial group didn’t like the next guy they all put little fences around their cemeteries.
Why is that your favorite cemetery right now?
FLEIG: They have a cool custom––Jewish people visit their grandmum and they leave a stone,
and that tells you that somebody’s been there. It also says, “Hey I remember.” That’s one of the
reasons why I like the place. It has all kinds of other cool things––it has street signs. You can be
buried at the corner of Isaac and Abraham. I don’t know of any other cemetery in the country
that does that.
In your findings over the years, what have you found to be the most well-preserved
cemetery in the city of Chicago?
FLEIG: Zion Lutheran Church cemetery in Churchville. What had happened back in the day, all
these German guys come over and they start farming out around Addison, Woodale––west of
Chicago [in the] western suburbs. Since they were good Germans, they all were Lutheran so they built this really nice church. The road that it was on was called “Church Road,” and they nicknamed the neighborhood “Churchville.” And just like all of us, they started to die, and they built this really nice well-preserved cemetery. It’s neat. It’s clean, [and] they mow the lawn.
What’s your favorite cemetery in the city limits of Chicago?
FLEIG: I’m going to have to go with a daughter of Zion [Lutheran Cemetery]; it’s a cemetery that came after Zion. It’s in the city at the corner of Irving Park and Clark. It’s called Wunder’s. It’s a tiny little Lutheran cemetery. There was actually a Pastor Wunder; he did over 5,000 funerals.
Photos by: Jonathon Sadowski
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