After 165 years, Sewickley Cemetery continues to offer pristine setting

Bill Russo of Ohio Township has spent the better part of two decades ensuring the graves of military veterans have new flags in time for Memorial Day.

A handful of other former soldiers with the same mindset have assisted the Vietnam veteran for most of those years.

“We feel we need to do this, not only for ourselves, but for veterans who have served this country,” Russo said. “It’s something we feel we owe other veterans who are not here anymore. We’re not doing it to be saying something, we’re here because of them.”

Russo, 81, enlisted in the Air Force in 1965 and served through 1970, retiring at the rank of staff sergeant. He served a tour in Vietnam as crew chief on Puff the Magic Dragon, a C-47 cargo plane repurposed for military operations.

He said the planes were “very effective” and “saved our butt” at Pleiku, a city in central Vietnam.

Russo and his team of volunteers visit cemeteries throughout the Quaker Valley area and install about 6,000 flags starting two weeks before the holiday.

One such helper is retired U.S. Air Force Col. Ronald Gionta, who lives in the same township retirement community as Russo, Traditions of America at Summer Seat. The pair was at the Sewickley Cemetery on May 13.

They scour the property looking for more than just veteran markers near the grave sites.

“Some veterans don’t have the bronze markers, but they have a flag holder placed at their headstone,” Russo said. “We put flags inside the holders, too. Any place where we know there’s a veteran buried there, we put flags for Memorial Day.”

Gionta, 71, served in the military for 32 years, including 30 as an officer. He enlisted in 1980. Services included deployment in Operation Desert Storm, Air National Guard Crisis Action Team member at Andrews Air Force Base and with the Army National Guard as an air liaison officer at the Joint Operations Center.

Gionta said the flag placement was Russo’s idea; he said their efforts are not part of any organized entity.

It’s all done out of friendship and remembrance. They also visit the same cemeteries near Christmastime and put wreaths at the graves.

“It’s a very humbling experience to take care of veterans’ graves because we’re remembering those veterans,” Gionta said. “All veterans stick together and take care of each other. Even after veterans are gone, we still try to look after those veterans one way or another.”

Gionta said he was impressed with how well Sewickley Cemetery maintains its property along Hopkins Street.

“They rank on the upper scale of taking care of veterans’ graves,” he said. “There are veterans from all different wars in Sewickley Cemetery: Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I (and) II, the Gulf War.”

Local Boy Scout troops are also known to place flags at veteran grave sites in Sewickley.

The cemetery hosts a Memorial Day service at 1 p.m. following the borough’s parade. The names of local veterans who died in the past year are read during the service.

That tradition has taken place for about the last 100 years.

“The people who gave their lives for this country are worth remembering,” said J. Scott Wendt, cemetery board president. “You can tell about the quality of a society by the way they treat their dead. I’d like to think this is a wonderful cemetery because of what we do.”

Cemetery grounds

Sewickley Mayor George Shannon, a cemetery board member, said cemetery care is a labor of love for its four employees and his fellow board members.

“There are a lot of dead people in the cemetery, but they are respected and protected,” Shannon said. “It’s dedication to a community that’s been here for a long time. … There’s a lot of respect up here and there’s a lot of love in this community.”

More than 14,200 souls have been laid to rest in Sewickley, from regular casket burials to cremations, including several thousand veterans.

Office manager Steve Musgrave said it’s difficult to get an exact count of how many former military members are on the grounds.

The cemetery began on 22 acres in 1859.

According to cemetery records, the first burial took place in October 1860, a few weeks ahead of its dedication ceremony in November. The first official interment was Liddy Fundenberg, the wife of a Civil War dentist, in 1861.

Musgrave said the Civil War broke out just as the cemetery began serving families. Many local soldiers who died in battle or in military hospitals have their final resting place in Sewickley.

A Soldiers’ Monument known as Fame was erected and dedicated to 28 fallen soldiers from the area in 1866.

In 1915, one Confederate soldier and one Union soldier stood at the site for a Memorial Day service.

Fame was refurbished years ago to the granite tower with an angel on top, as seen today. One side of it has the names of those who died in combat. Another side has the names of those who died of wounds and disease.

The cemetery has expanded to nearly 80 acres, with the original plot serving as its entrance. About eight acres remain undeveloped and available for possible expansion.

Other historic spots

Other historic spots at Sewickley Cemetery include the nation’s only public Tuskegee Airmen Memorial.

It was dedicated on Sept. 15, 2013, to the group of African-American pilots and airmen who served in World War II. It celebrates nearly 100 airmen from Western Pennsylvania, including eight from Sewickley.

The memorial features a plaque showing close-up faces of some of the pilots, along with several of them standing in a group appearing to look over mission plans.

Pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group painted the tails of their P-47s red and were nicknamed “Red Tails,” and the memorial pays tribute to this with a stone replica of a red plane tail that sits atop a large stone slab.

A quote from the late Lt. Col. William H. Holloman III, the U.S. Air Force’s first African-American helicopter pilot and a member of the combat fighter pilots of the 332nd, is etched into the slab. “We helped African American people raise their heads and say, ‘I can do it.’ America is not perfect, but I’ll hold her hand until she gets well. ”

Two other large slabs, one to each side of the tail, feature the names of the airmen.

Eight stone stars scattered on the memorial floor symbolize the eight soldiers from Sewickley.

There are two benches at the memorial, one provided by the Sewickley Valley Historical Society and the other by Regis and Hurley Bobonis and their family.

Second Lt. Mitchell Higginbotham became the first Tuskegee airman buried at the memorial. He died Feb. 14, 2016, and was buried May 28, 2016. He was 94.

Sewickley Cemetery is also home to the USAir Flight 427 Memorial.

Located in a secluded section far from the entrance, it is in memory of the 132 lives lost on Sept. 8, 1994 on a scheduled flight from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to Palm Beach International Airport in Florida.

There was a stopover at Pittsburgh International Airport.

The Boeing 737 plummeted to the ground near Hopewell as it prepared to land at Pittsburgh.

The National Transportation Safety Board would later find — after the longest investigation into the board’s history — a rudder malfunction caused the crash that killed all those on board. The report, released March 24, 1999, detailed the investigation and included a transcript of air and ground communications as well as a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder.

Cemetery operations

Sewickley Cemetery receives no federal funding. The nondenominational non-profit thrives on donations, investments and burial services.

Board president J. Scott Wendt said it costs about $600,000 per year to run the cemetery, which has run an annual deficit of $80,000 to $100,000 for quite some time.

Wendt said that despite shortfalls, the cemetery has “never even been close” to declaring bankruptcy, thanks to a lot of community support.

“We have a very loyal following and we have raised money in years past,” Wendt said. “We’re also fortunate to have good financial advice. It’s a challenge to run the cemetery. It’s no secret that we lose money every year on operations, but we are able to make it up with our investment income and donations.”

The cemetery spent about $700,000 in the past few years on capital projects, including repaving roads and buying new equipment such as an ATV, backhoe and lawnmowers.

Wendt estimates there are about $4 million in cemetery reserves.

“We’re in good shape,” he said. “We have land available, so we have room to expand as needed.”

Superintendent Ted Stevens said he and groundskeepers Jeff Kries and Rob Gregory cut grass every day May through October and constantly clean up leaves in the fall in addition to burial services.

The hardest part of cemetery maintenance is dealing with deer.

Stevens said the animals tend to eat many of the plants families place by gravestones.

Since the cemetery receives no federal funding, cemetery officials are not concerned about the Trump Administration and its diversity, equity and inclusion purge impacting the Tuskegee monument.

Helping families

Musgrave and Stevens help families with their plots and plan services. Musgrave mostly handles paperwork while Stevens guides patrons around the land.

They said experiences vary from those in a grieving period to folks pre-planning.

“There’s not really a way to plan for it because everybody’s going to be different,” Musgrave said of family interactions. “I’ve had people come in and (were planning) for someone in their 90s and they were sick and it was just time. Then you have families who have lost children or young people.

”Every person who comes in for a meeting is going to be different. You deal with it kind of as it comes, just because you never know what’s going to walk through the door at a given moment. You just have to lead them down the path and show them what we have.”

Wendt said he has been on the board for more than 40 years. He’s worked with at least three superintendents and three office managers.

“Everybody who has ever dealt with our staff has had nothing but compliments and thanks for their attentiveness and their compassion for them,” Wendt said.