Every year, on the Saturday before Memorial Day, a volunteer from American Legion Post 353 trudges up White Horse Mountain and places flags at the graves of Civil War veterans.
Except for the annual visit, the cemetery had been neglected since an Eagle Scout candidate cleaned it up more than a dozen years ago. After his project was done, the weeds and shrubbery grew back until they were as high as the gravestones.
“It’s a worthy project for a Scout or an organization,” we suggested in the Aug. 1, 2014 issue of the Local. Soon after that, an administrator at Storm King School accepted the challenge.
The cemetery is not far from the school. To get to it, one would park on Reservoir Road (next to Storm King’s soccer field) walk up a private driveway into the woods, and veer left at a vee-shaped tree.
In early April, Taras Ferencevych (an administrator at Storm King) made his first visit to the historic site. He was able to see the graveyard from the path in the woods. A few weeks later that wasn’t possible, because the foliage was growing quickly.
Mr. Ferencevych returned several times with work crews. Groups of students would join him at lunch time. After the spring sports season was over, teams hiked uphill to the cemetery instead of practicing.
The job was time-consuming. Instead of cutting saplings, the students uprooted them. As of May 20, the job was about three-quarters done. The annual visitors from the American Legion were due to be surprised.
The cemetery dates back to the mid-19th Century when Ira Wood’s wife was terminally ill. She asked him to clear a burial ground on his property, and make it available without charge to anyone who lived on the mountain.
Mr. Wood complied and over the years the graveyard became the resting place of three Civil War veterans. It also includes a World War I flagholder in memory of Dr. Ernest Stillman, whose ashes are scattered in the forest.
On May 20, Mr. Ferencevych said that the clean-up would be done by the end of the school year, and Storm King students would continue to maintain the site in the future.
