You can drive by a place hundreds, if not thousands, of times without paying attention to your surroundings.
Over my lifetime, I’ve driven up Swallow Street in Pittston from Main Street to get to the Pittston By-Pass and never paid attention to the homes along the way or to the football field or to the two cemeteries.
I was always aware of the football field and cemeteries and outside of the sign at the one cemetery stating it’s St. Casmir’s Cemetery, that’s about all I knew – until recently.
While on assignment, I headed to the Pittston Cemetery, the cemetery across the street from St. Casmir’s Cemetery and Albert West Memorial Park.
Maybe I had not seen the name of Pittston Cemetery for many, many years due to the overgrowth of trees and bushes and I’ve never noticed the sign for West Field, either.
If you stop, even for a moment, to look around and see what’s right in front of you, you might be amazed.
The Albert West Memorial Park was dedicated in July 1922 in honor of the World War I veteran who lost his life during the war. West is buried across the street at the Pittston Cemetery.
The Pittston Cemetery is an historical marvel in itself with the first person being laid to rest in 1857. If cemeteries could talk, they’d have a lot to say about their dead. Each and every gravesite has a story to tell.
Cemetery caretakers not only oversee burials of our loved ones along with maintaining the site with grass cutting, tree trimming, etc. Most are historians in their own right.
Take, for example, Bob Arye. Bob has been the caretaker at Pittston Cemetery for the past two years and can tell you about every square inch of the cemetery. He has studied the archives stored at the cemetery and can tell you just about where everyone is buried.
Bob tells me there are over 130 Civil War veterans buried in the Pittston Cemetery as well as PA State Senator William Drury who served at the turn of the 1900s for two terms.
Drury, a Pittston merchant by the way of Bristol, England, died on March 14, 1913.
A few of Pittston’s mayors are also buried there, namely Benjamin Harding (1898-1899), who died in office, and John J. Allardyce (1950-1954).
The cemetery is divided into two sections – upper and lower or a new and old section. The upper tier is the original section and the lower section was, at one time, a huge gully. That gully was filled in with 20,000 cubic yards of soil to level it off, creating a new section.
According to Bob, miners from just about every mining disaster that took place in the Pittston area are buried at the cemetery, including the Avondale and Eagle Shaft.
One of the more famous mining disasters was the Twin Shaft Disaster, which took place in the Junction section of Pittston. Even thought none of the dead were recovered, a large monument was erected in the name of Robert Haston who died on that fateful day of June 28, 1896 at the age of 40. There is also a street named after Haston in the city.
Bob took me to a monument that depicted two figures that can barely be seen due to deterioration from wind, rain, snow and sun over the decades.
If you look carefully, you can see an adult clinging to a child. Bob had to outline the figures for me but, once he did, I could see it.
The story behind the figures involves coal miner David Owens and his son, Richard. David was a native of North Wales before relocating to the Pittston area.
He and Richard were mining at the Eagle Shaft mine when both lost their lives in the disaster. David was 44 years old and Richard was just 13.
Legend has it that, when the bodies of the two were found, David was holding his son in his arms as they took their last breaths together on that ill-fated day of Aug. 14, 1871.
There are approximately 10,000 souls buried at the Pittston Cemetery and, no doubt, a story could be told at every single grave – just ask Bob Ayre.
Quote of the week
“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it’s the only one you have.” – George S. Kaufman
Thought of the week
“We tend to get what we expect.” – Norman Vincent Peale
Bumper sticker
“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.” – Walt Whitman
