Salute to a scribe

WHILE MOURNERS drove through the winding roads of Roosevelt Memorial Cemetery to say goodbye to their loved ones, another group filed into the mausoleum to memorialize an old friend whom only one of them had ever met: noir writer David Goodis.

The people who gathered inside the grand mausoleum, with its high ceilings and stained glass, were there to honor the homegrown Goodis, who died on Jan. 7, 1967. On the anniversary each year, this small band of men and women meet at this Trevose cemetery to remember the writer who is buried there, and then tour his old haunts.

Goodis was known for chronicling Philadelphia's dark side, setting his stories in neighborhoods like Port Richmond and Kensington. His books are populated with downtrodden people whose lives start low and only get lower.

Lou Boxer, an anesthesiologist at Chester County Hospital, organizes the annual memorial tour. This year, Boxer handed out pins featuring a picture of Goodis doing the limbo at a 1963 bar mitzvah at the Barclay Hotel. Goodis is wearing a white tuxedo, with his arms stretched wide, squinching up his face as if to make his body more elastic. It's a funny image for a man associated with writing about Philadelphia's underbelly.

Thirteen people showed up for this year's tour, including a contingent from New York and West Philadelphian Andrew Kevorkian, who met Goodis once and attended his funeral. Kevorkian said it wasn't as cold that day 44 years ago, and there wasn't snow on the ground as there was this year.

Goodis' grave site is a modest rectangular stone sandwiched between the similar markers of his parents and brother, situated not far from the mausoleum. Aaron Finestone led the group in reciting the Kaddish, the Jewish mourners' prayer, and Boxer described the tradition of leaving stones at the grave of the dead to make the presence of visitors known. Boxer had a bucket of stones waiting.

But the mood wasn't somber. Instead, it was like a meeting of old friends. Edward Pettit, a freelance writer, adjunct professor at LaSalle and self-proclaimed literary provocateur, toasted Goodis' memory and took a swig from a flask of Jameson. Later, others joined him in imbibing.