“THE CEMETERY MAN”
Hello, my name is David Turner. I have the memory moment today. I’m a baby in the history of this church because I started in 1972. My history may be colorful, but it is short. I am doing this in the name of the Overbecks. You see we had a family meeting to see which one of us would make the biggest fool of ourselves up here and I was the unanimous choice. This is called taking one for the family.
This church is 200 years old this year. What speaks better about that history than the people that made that history? Many of those people rest in our cemetery.
This is the view we see from the road behind our church. It doesn’t look that impressive does it. Now this is the view from within the cemetery.
There are approximately 1052 tombstones in the cemetery, 444 buried between 1826 – 1900, 608 buried from 1900 to the present. The oldest monument we could find was Clamentine Todd in 1826. We have veterans of the Civil War, World War I and World War II.
There are 122 Todds, 72 Catheys, 46 McCords, 41 Johnsons, 36 Hoovers, 34 Beatys, 32 Hipps, 26 Loves, 25 Wingates, 23 Dunns, 19 Alexanders, and 18 Cox.
There are stories about the Catheys and how their roots go way back in the church’s history. This shows how those stories got started.
Now that brings me to my story today. This is the story of “The Cemetery Man!” Now this is a true story. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
It all started on a dark night about 21 years ago. Some vandals raided our cemetery. Shortly after that the Cemetery Man began to appear. He can be pretty scary. How many of you have ever worked with the Cemetery Man? If you have, you know it can become gruesome at times.
The Cemetery Man took on the daunting task of repairing the cemetery. He found about 25 monuments knocked over and over 100 monuments broken in pieces. Some in as many as seven pieces. He used a large dump truck load of sand and 11,370 pounds of hand mixed cement two large batches of epoxy and wooden framing material. He picked up an idea Grover Elliott had used. He made a frame of wood filled it with hand mixed cement and then placed the pieces of the monument in the cement in jigsaw fashion and let it dry. He then would carry the new monument in a wheel barrow and mount the monument with epoxy. He glued some monuments together and even bolted some monuments together. In all he repaired over 130 monuments. He would later say there were many people helping him. He wanted to mention Glen Cathey for surveying the boundary lines, Paul McCord and Jarvis Midget for days cutting down and removal of trees, and Emmet Allen who contracted to remove the stumps.
You would think after repairing over 130 monuments he would retire. But while doing all this work in the cemetery he would notice more and more people wandering around the cemetery to find a monument or gravesite of a loved one. He thought it was time someone did a survey of the cemetery to show where everyone was buried. The cemetery was sectioned off into 12 sections. Every effort was made to clean the monuments so someone could read the names. He finished the survey and had all the information compiled and had nowhere to go with it. A few weeks later while he was cleaning around the fences he noticed a young lady on her knee in front of a tombstone. He walked up to her and said, “I don’t want to be nosey, but what are you doing. She said she was doing a survey and hoped to publish a list of everyone buried here.” He said “Honey, I have just what you need. If you will just follow me home I’ll be glad to give just what you need”. This shocked me at first but I knew the Cemetery Man’s wife was waiting at home with his lunch so I knew everything was OK… Anyway, he gave her all of his information. The lady turned out to be Donna Joy Johnson. She grew up as a member of Paw Creek Presbyterian Church. Donna took the information she had from a partial survey done in the 1930s and the Cemetery Man’s information. She combined them, edited them and published a book that includes a brief history of the church, alphabetical listing by section of everyone buried at Paw Creek Presbyterian Church. Donna also put all the information on the Internet and is available at the main library downtown. Thirty people have died and been buried since the survey was released. Donna is periodically given and update and she updates the computer listing.
Here is something else you may not have known.
There was a lady named Sara Elizabeth Todd who was brought up in this church. She married a man named George Kawa and lived in New York City. She died in 1995 and was buried in the last remaining plot available for her family. Sometime later the Cemetery Man received a call from Mr. Kawa asking if he could be buried next to his wife in the cemetery. Regrettably, the Cemetery Man had to tell him there just was no room. Apparently, it was terribly important to Mr. Kawa to rest next to his beloved wife, so the Cemetery Man said let me look into it. After checking into it, he found the plot was at the end of a row, so he called Mr. Kawa back and said he could get it cone. So after receiving $300.00 for the plot, Mr. Kawa was able to rest next to his beloved wife. He died in November of 2004. So there is a little history behind Mr. George Kawa.
So, some day you may have your family walking in the cemetery to visit a loved one. Your son may see a guy over by the fence pulling weeds. He may say, “Dad, who is this guy?” You can say, “Son, that is the Cemetery Man!” By the way the secret identity of the Cemetery Man is Chuck Overbeck.
