A collection of personal anecdotes co-authored by Art Sesnovich and Frank Quaglia
WORCESTER, Mass. /PRNewswire/ — Vampires. Peeing monkeys. Clients who wore their clothes backwards. Even nudist wakes.
In four decades as a world-renowned funeral director – a reputation enhanced by his role as the man who buried the Boston Marathon Bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev – Peter Stefan truly saw it all. The owner of Graham Putnam Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester, MA, Stefan met, buried, and worked with a cast of characters that kept his life, and his job, very interesting.
Many of the people – and the stories that go with them – were so strange yet so amusing, Stefan felt compelled to put them into a collection entitled “Mumblings of a Mortician” (available on Amazon, $19.99 print, $14.99 Kindle). Written by co-authors Art Sesnovich and Frank Quaglia, the collection of personal anecdotes focus on the bizarre, head-shaking situations Stefan encountered as a funeral director, along with his unique perspective on various matters, both vital and trivial.
There was the Asian family that cooked a chicken in a hubcap on the floor of the viewing room, setting the carpet on fire in the process. There was the time when two funerals were going on at the same time, after which each funeral party followed the wrong hearse to the cemetery. There was the team of paranormal researchers, convinced there were ghosts in Stefan’s building and that they had captured the creatures on film, only to discover it was Stefan’s pipe smoke.
A special place has been reserved for Stefan’s employees, like the one who came into work every morning feeling sick, only to recover in the afternoon. Stefan discovered the employee was brushing his teeth with hemorrhoid cream.
An entire chapter is devoted to the story behind Stefan’s decision to bury the Boston Marathon Bomber, and how he accomplished this task with the attention of the world upon him. Many people respected his decision to perform the burial, believing, as he did, that every human being – regardless of what they did in life – deserves a proper burial. Just as many, however, hated him for it; he received death threats daily, and police details were stationed outside his funeral home for days while the logistics were being worked out.
Not surprisingly, the unflappable Stefan bought pizza and soda for the protesters. Why? His answer was typically simple: “They were hungry.”
And the peeing monkey? Little Bixby was a pet that a friend could no longer keep, so Stefan brought him home to his family. To show his gratitude to Stefan for saving him from certain euthanasia, Bixby constantly peed on him – no one else, just him. Stefan was philosophical: “I should have been grateful: some monkeys throw their feces at people,” he observed.
On a somber note, Stefan passed away on March 21, 2022 at the age of 85. He got to see his book in print, realizing a long-time dream of his.
SOURCE Arthur Sesnovich
Rod Washington: Rod is a blogger, writer, filmmaker, photographer, daydreamer who likes to cook. Rod produces and directs the web series, CUPIC: Diary of an Investigator. He also produces news and documentary video projects. Check out his podcast StoriesThisMoment at https://m3e.d71.myftpupload.com/stm-tncn-podcasts/
