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At cemeteries, victory signs for departed Phillies fans

Richie Ashburn's rust-colored headstone stands out among the others in a small sea of graves behind the Gladwyne United Methodist Church.

Phillies World Series championship pennants decorate a gravesite in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Pa.  (Donald D. Groff / For the Daily News)
Phillies World Series championship pennants decorate a gravesite in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Pa. (Donald D. Groff / For the Daily News)Read more

Richie Ashburn's rust-colored headstone stands out among the others in a small sea of graves behind the Gladwyne United Methodist Church.

A Phillies rally towel lies on the grass in front of the grave with a note to Ashburn, the Phillies centerfielder and broadcaster who died in 1997.

"I know you are cheering with us, Whitey," the note, scrawled on the towel in black permanent marker, reads. "I saved you a towel. With love, JF."

In the wake of the Phillies' World Series victory, family members and friends of deceased fans have visited their graves to place memorabilia.

Daniel Dailey, 33, a former Fishtown resident who lives in Lancaster County, visited his great-uncle's grave at Chelten Hills Cemetery in West Oak Lane on Thursday afternoon to leave a Phillies hat and two balloons.

"He was an old time die-hard fan," Dailey said of his great-uncle, John Birely Dailey, who died at 80 in 2003 and was buried with a Phillies hat in his casket. "He was a true believer."

Daniel Dailey explained that his grandfather died when he was young, and that because his great-uncle filled the role of grandfather for him, it meant a lot to him to be able to see the Phillies win and put the hat and balloons on his grave.

Dailey, who works Sundays in Philadelphia as a program associate for historical Laurel Hill Cemetery, said he visited the grave alone to make sure his great-uncle was included in the excitement surrounding the win.

"It's been such a long time" since the Phillies won a World Series, Dailey said. "He would've been rolling over in his grave if he knew. He always stuck with them."

He said that at Laurel Hill, he hasn't seen anyone come specifically to place memorabilia.

He didn't have the chance to attend any of the World Series games, but Dailey took his family to a movie theater in Lancaster County that showed the games on the big screen.

"Words can't even describe it," he said. "[My great-uncle] was quiet, not like the nuts you see now, so he would have kept to himself [if he saw it]. But, a tear probably would have come to his eye."

In wooded West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, where changing leaves put an almost-festive yellow canopy over many of the graves yesterday afternoon, a stroll among the neat plots in the southern section revealed more than half a dozen sites with Phillies mementos. Along the marble headstone of a woman who had lived from 1951 to 1995, a fist-size rock anchored a silver Phillies balloon that shifted slowly in the breeze.

Nearby, a plastic Phillies marker in the shape of a ball diamond stood on a pole above the ground-level marker of a man who had died in November 2007, not quite one year before the team achieved the ultimate baseball victory.

Within site of that grave, a tall dark marker etched with white Korean-language characters had more than 10 pots of flowers clustered at its base, and tucked among them on the right side was a red flag bearing the white Phillies logo and the inscription "2008 World Series Champs."

Elsewhere in the parklike cemetery, a green pennant with Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays logos was pushed into the soil, its pointed end caressing shiny bronze letters naming a World War II Navy man who was a "doctor of medicine." He died June 7, 2008, just less than five months before the team made its triumphant parade down South Broad. *