My name is Lea, and I am a massage therapist by trade, and an armchair detective in my spare time..I am also a proud mom of three. I grew up on the North Shore, and I went to High School in Melrose, MA. I moved here to the South Shore (North Quincy) with my first husband after I had my first child in 1987, then to Weymouth a year later, and I've been here ever since! Even though I didn't grow up here, I feel like I did. I definitely like it better here than the North Shore, but it's still nice to go visit my old stomping grounds from time to time.
I have many different interests and hobbies, but when the pandemic started I began to do some research online to find some of my family's lost history and my Albanian heritage, which I knew virtually nothing about? While I was growing up most people just assumed I was Italian, so I didn't try to correct them, because no one ever heard of Albania before. It's a tiny country, and even though it's in between Greece and Italy and borders Turkey, it was a very communist country until the late 1990's, and nobody was allowed in or out, so most people were not even aware of Albania's existence, including myself!

My grandparents came here from Albania when they were very young, but I think it traumatized them, so they never wanted to talk about it. Unfortunately both of my grandparents have passed away, so I can't ask them about it anymore..

I wanted to learn more about where my family came from, and possibly find some distant relatives using sites like Ancestry.com, and I have already learned so much new information that I never knew about my family, especially my grandparents and great grandparents, I even found some pictures of them that someone else posted, it's really cool!

One of my other favorite things to do has always been walking through different graveyards, looking for the most unusual, interesting, beautiful, and sometimes creepy gravestones and mausoleums . While I was doing some digging on my family tree, I stumbled upon a historical graveyard video on YouTube, and it was all about Celebrity burial sites, and I was instantly hooked! I couldn't get enough of them! I binge watched down the rabbit hole of every graveyard video I could find, and that's how I discovered One of my favorite YouTube channels called "Faces of the Forgotten".
His videos are so interesting, and I appreciate the way he travels all over the country to find a particular person's grave while he tells us all about their lives, and sometimes tragic deaths! Apparently, he also works with "find a grave" to get headstones for people who don't have one, and he pays for them out of his own pocket, that is just the kind of guy he is. I do enjoy hearing some of the sad stories of the dead, but It also teaches me to appreciate my life more, as it reminds me that they all had lives once too, just like us. Time goes by too fast!
"Tempus Fugit"

Some might find this pastime kind of morbid, so I don't tell most people about my little graveyard hobby, lol.
I always thought I was the only one who enjoyed doing this sort of thing, because anyone I've ever told thinks it was kind of depressing or spooky..I guess it's not for everyone, but apparently there are many people out there who do enjoy finding lost graves for other people, or looking at graves for themselves, as much as I do, otherwise Find-A-Grave wouldn't exist!!

My name is Lea, and I am a massage therapist by trade, and an armchair detective in my spare time..I am also a proud mom of three. I grew up on the North Shore, and I went to High School in Melrose, MA. I moved here to the South Shore (North Quincy) with my first husband after I had my first child in 1987, then to Weymouth a year later, and I've been here ever since! Even though I didn't grow up here, I feel like I did. I definitely like it better here than the North Shore, but it's still nice to go visit my old stomping grounds from time to time.
I have many different interests and hobbies, but when the pandemic started I began to do some research online to find some of my family's lost history and my Albanian heritage, which I knew virtually nothing about? While I was growing up most people just assumed I was Italian, so I didn't try to correct them, because no one ever heard of Albania before. It's a tiny country, and even though it's in between Greece and Italy and borders Turkey, it was a very communist country until the late 1990's, and nobody was allowed in or out, so most people were not even aware of Albania's existence, including myself!

My grandparents came here from Albania when they were very young, but I think it traumatized them, so they never wanted to talk about it. Unfortunately both of my grandparents have passed away, so I can't ask them about it anymore..

I wanted to learn more about where my family came from, and possibly find some distant relatives using sites like Ancestry.com, and I have already learned so much new information that I never knew about my family, especially my grandparents and great grandparents, I even found some pictures of them that someone else posted, it's really cool!

One of my other favorite things to do has always been walking through different graveyards, looking for the most unusual, interesting, beautiful, and sometimes creepy gravestones and mausoleums . While I was doing some digging on my family tree, I stumbled upon a historical graveyard video on YouTube, and it was all about Celebrity burial sites, and I was instantly hooked! I couldn't get enough of them! I binge watched down the rabbit hole of every graveyard video I could find, and that's how I discovered One of my favorite YouTube channels called "Faces of the Forgotten".
His videos are so interesting, and I appreciate the way he travels all over the country to find a particular person's grave while he tells us all about their lives, and sometimes tragic deaths! Apparently, he also works with "find a grave" to get headstones for people who don't have one, and he pays for them out of his own pocket, that is just the kind of guy he is. I do enjoy hearing some of the sad stories of the dead, but It also teaches me to appreciate my life more, as it reminds me that they all had lives once too, just like us. Time goes by too fast!
"Tempus Fugit"

Some might find this pastime kind of morbid, so I don't tell most people about my little graveyard hobby, lol.
I always thought I was the only one who enjoyed doing this sort of thing, because anyone I've ever told thinks it was kind of depressing or spooky..I guess it's not for everyone, but apparently there are many people out there who do enjoy finding lost graves for other people, or looking at graves for themselves, as much as I do, otherwise Find-A-Grave wouldn't exist!!