Volunteers are striving to preserve site
Despite strenous scrubbing with a toothbrush, Mike O'Brien has been unable to erase all the lime-green gang
graffiti that mars the historic tombstones at Redwood City's Union Cemetery.
Because the gravestones are made of a porous material, O'Brien estimates it will be 20 years before
the modern-day markings disappear, including one of a giant marijuana leaf.
Using a stronger brush is out of the question because it would damage the aging stones.
"This is a historical site and it should be treated with love and reverence," said Jean Cloud, president
of the Historic Union Cemetery Association, shaking her head. "The history of this area lies
right here in this cemetery."
Cloud and O'Brien are members of a small band of volunteers who lovingly care for the
picturesque graveyard, home to at least 2,300 of the European and American settlers who
died in the area between 1859 and 1954. The cemetery is a state of California landmark
and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Many of the volunteers have no relatives buried there, and none receive compensation
for their labors. But all share a fondness for the serene six-acre site on Woodside Road
just west of El Camino Real, where palm and oak trees shade the poignant tombstones
that provide insight into a bygone era.
In one corner, a grave site for a young child is surrounded by a white iron fence
made to look like a crib,
including a blue pacifier and an array of toys inside. There are towering monuments for Civil
War veterans and prominent settlers from
places like Germany, England and Scotland, and a tiny marker for 2-year-old Mary,
who died in 1872. "A sweet little child, with bright sunny eyes," the monument reads,
"a treasure on earth, a gem in the skies."
Visitors still can see the gaping hole where Simon Mezes, the lawyer who laid out
the first map of Redwood City in 1854, was buried. His outraged descendants dug up
his body in 1954 and moved him to another cemetery when county officials decided
to build a Hall of Justice and Records on land he had dedicated as a permanent park.
"People who have lived in Redwood City a long time have a special place in
their heart for this cemetery," O'Brien said. "As teen-agers, they probably came
out here and had some adventures."
Yet for every volunteer, it seems, there are an equal number of people who
have no qualms about trashing the place.
Throughout the cemetery, statues have been beheaded and monuments knocked
off their bases. Many sit far from the grave site they originally marked. A
tombstone for 4-year-old Annie Douglass, who died in 1859, now lies atop the
grave of someone who appears to have been at least 6 feet tall.
Volunteers pick up cottage cheese containers and bags of crackers left by
a homeless man who sometimes spends the night in the cemetery. Then there were
the people who set of fireworks and ignited the century-old palm trees.
"We were on our way to a city council meeting to accept a beautification
award and the cemetery was on fire," O'Brien recalls.
When Cloud visited the site several years ago after learning that some of
her husband's relatives were buried there, she found it "in wrack and ruin.
Nobody cared for it." Later she was appalled to discover that some people
wanted to do away with the graveyard and put a Little League baseball diamond there.
So she and others began a lengthy campaign to get Union Cemetery included
on the National Register of Historic Places.
Last year, she helped form the 80-member Historic Union Cemetery
Association to restore the landmark. The task is daunting, but volunteers
have made significant progress.
One Saturday each month, members gather to pick up trash, plant thorny
rose bushes near the fences to prevent vandals from climbing over them,
remove graffiti, restore rusted iron fences and prune trees.
O'Brien spends hours caring for the wide variety of rose bushes on the
property. Some, more than 100 years old and considered very rare, are from
cuttings brought from back East on covered wagons.
Other members pour over old obituaries and burial records trying to
discover where displaced markers belong. Plans also are under way to restore
broken tombstones and coat them with a thin layer of wax so graffiti can be
easily removed.
"People nowadays don't have much opportunity to think about the past,"
Cloud said. "But the past has contributed to what we are today."
"More and more people are coming out to see what's going on," O'Brien said.
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