Cemetery Tales 2022 streaming now

This year’s production, a documentary-style video from the award-winning director, producer, and writing team of Joe Garoutte and Michael Friend, again portrays a diverse cast of characters from different cultures, backgrounds and time periods in Hood River history.

The common thread to these stories is music, “from barbershop quartet members Maltie Dukes and Harry DeWitt in the early 1900s to mariachi musician Benigno Lopez in the recent past, with violinist/ conductor Dorothy McCormick, the Swiss Family Fraunfelders and others in between,” said a museum press release.

This is the first Cemetery Tales to include a segment in Spanish with English subtitles.

“The video also portrays Japanese-American Nisei World War II veteran George Akiyama, to coincide with the dedication of the Oregon Nisei Veterans WWII Memorial Highway (Highway 35) in August and the current History Museum exhibit, ‘A Long Road to Travel,’” said the press release. “While not a musician himself, George was honored with an original piece by the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, about his experience returning to Hood River after the war.”

It’s worth noting that the 2021 Cemetery Tales won a Silver Telly Award, and is available on YouTube free of charge, the link for which can be found on the museum’s website.