The Gladwyne Jewish Memorial Cemetery is the final resting place for hundreds of European immigrants. Joe Ferrannini is committed to preserving the crumbling gravestones, writes Paul Jablow for Main Line Today.

The cemetery is located just off Conshohocken State Road in Gladwyne. No one has been buried there since 1945.

In the 1890s, two burial societies founded Har Hasetim as the final resting place for European immigrants. The name in English is “Mount of Olives.”

The Beth David Reform Congregation now owns it and since 2015 has been working on restoring it.

That is where Ferrannini comes in. He restores old gravestones and burial sites for a living.

“It’s such meaningful work. These are people whose memories would otherwise be lost,” he said.

Since 2018, he has been coming to the cemetery from his upstate New York home for two weeks in the spring and two in the fall to restore gravesites.

So far, he has restored more than 150 of the 1,200 gravesites.

Read more about the restoration project at the Gladwyne Jewish Memorial Cemetery in the Main Line Today.

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