This week’s guest on The Historians Podcast is Peter Betz of Fulton County who explains how he was able to help a family acquire a grave marker at no cost for a deceased family member who was a United States Army veteran.
Betz is a member of the Perth town council and president of the Perth Center Cemetery Association. He found that a veteran who died in recent years was buried next to his wife who had died in 2010. His wife had a headstone but the veteran, Howard Forgette, did not.
Betz was able to locate the veteran’s daughter in an online search. She said not having a grave marker for her father had bothered her for a long time. The family lacked the funds needed to buy a grave marker and were not aware of the federal headstone or bronze grave marker program. She provided the needed information, including a death certificate, to request a free bronze marker from the federal government. The family will install the marker in the spring.
In the podcast Betz also discusses a program on immigrant stories that will be held at the Fulton County Museum in Gloversville.
He has an account of a bear who did groundhog-style weather forecasting at the former Sacandaga Park. And he explains the arrival of television around 1950 in his Amsterdam childhood home when the placement of an outdoor aerial was a delicate and difficult project.
Betz is a professor emeritus from Fulton Montgomery Community College, a former newspaper columnist and Fulton County Historian. He is a popular musician and raconteur at area history gatherings.
You can listen to the podcast here.
You will find more podcasts and stories at bobcudmore.com.
Historians Podcast host Bob Cudmore is author of Lost Mohawk Valley and three other books. He writes the weekly column Focus on History in the Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder.
The Historians Podcast is heard on RISE, WMHT’s radio information service for the blind and print disabled in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley. The podcast is broadcast Saturdays at 12:05 pm on WCSS 1490 AM/106.9 FM in Amsterdam and Sunday at 4:30 pm on WBDY 99.5 FM in Binghamton.
For a full list of this week’s New York Almanack podcasts announcements click HERE.
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