This is me(John) and "Rusty", my beloved 17 year-old American Cocker Spaniel, and our 1963 Nova SS that we would go cruising together in. Rusty was my first true unconditional love and I had owned him since I was a teenager. Congestive heart failure finally took him from me on February 26, 2001. The photo was taken on December 13, 2000. He is now interred at the Greenbriar Pet Cemetery in Apopka, FL. He has a prime plot and the fanciest fully lined casket money could buy, but I couldn't decide on a monument worthy enough for such a wondferful friend and companion. The selection of headstones at the pet cemetery wasn't very good, so I began going to people cemeteries around the Central Florida area for ideas. The wide variety of shapes and sizes of headstones as well as, dates, titles, and final words set in the stone really caught my interest. There is a lot of history to be learned in a cemetery. The homeade concrete headstones in the smaller and more run down cemeteries were the most interesting of all. I finally decided on a large Missouri Red slant headstone for Rusty.
I continued to take ramdom names and dates from small cemeteries I found scattered around Florida and add them to the Find-A-Grave archives. I was surprised to receive thank you notes from a few people over the years who had lost track of their relatives and had no idea where they ended up. Not necessarily good news, but it is closure which amounts to something.

This is me(John) and "Rusty", my beloved 17 year-old American Cocker Spaniel, and our 1963 Nova SS that we would go cruising together in. Rusty was my first true unconditional love and I had owned him since I was a teenager. Congestive heart failure finally took him from me on February 26, 2001. The photo was taken on December 13, 2000. He is now interred at the Greenbriar Pet Cemetery in Apopka, FL. He has a prime plot and the fanciest fully lined casket money could buy, but I couldn't decide on a monument worthy enough for such a wondferful friend and companion. The selection of headstones at the pet cemetery wasn't very good, so I began going to people cemeteries around the Central Florida area for ideas. The wide variety of shapes and sizes of headstones as well as, dates, titles, and final words set in the stone really caught my interest. There is a lot of history to be learned in a cemetery. The homeade concrete headstones in the smaller and more run down cemeteries were the most interesting of all. I finally decided on a large Missouri Red slant headstone for Rusty.
I continued to take ramdom names and dates from small cemeteries I found scattered around Florida and add them to the Find-A-Grave archives. I was surprised to receive thank you notes from a few people over the years who had lost track of their relatives and had no idea where they ended up. Not necessarily good news, but it is closure which amounts to something.