Touring Allentown’s historic Fairview Cemetery is fascinating — and hazardous. An unwary walker risks stumbling into one of the groundhog holes dotting the acreage, brushing against poison ivy or picking up some of the ticks hidden in the tall weeds.
The 24-acre cemetery at Eighth and Lehigh streets, laid out in 1870, is the resting place of many notables — soldiers, doctors, business leaders. The list includes industrialist Harry Trexler, probably the foremost citizen in city history. Allentown’s treasured park system was his doing.
Nevertheless, Fairview is in bad shape. The frontage visible from Lehigh Street is tidy enough. Beyond that, high grass and weeds smother headstones, some of which have been knocked over. Vandals have broken into some of the mausoleums. Critters are rampant.
“I came down here to find the grave of my great-grandfather and couldn’t find his stone under four feet of grass,” said Tyler Fatzinger, a 26-year-old history and genealogy buff who started a campaign — not the first and probably not the last — to clean up the cemetery.
‘Mowing and weeding cost money’
David Boyko, funeral director and head of the nonprofit Fairview Cemetery Association, knows the grounds are in rough shape. He wishes it weren’t so, but his explanation is blunt: Mowing and weeding cost money, and the association doesn’t have enough to do any more than it does now.
That’s been the case for years, and Boyko is is hardly alone in dealing with the problem. Old cemeteries around the country, including others in the Lehigh Valley, are as forlorn-looking as Fairview, in large part because they are full, or mostly full. Fewer plot sales means fewer burials, and that means less money for maintenance.
Last year, for instance, Boyko held only one burial for a “heritage” grave, meaning one that had been paid for well in advance. In addition, perpetual care funds paid by families for grave maintenance have dried up as relatives moved away or family lines died out entirely.
This state of affairs would confound earlier generations. In years past, “cemeteries were often revered community icons,” said John Bry, principal planner and program coordinator of Main Street Oakland County in Michigan and a noted expert on cemetery preservation and restoration.
“Cemeteries were historically established by private, nonprofit associations,” Bry said. “Oftentimes, they had healthy endowments and active, engaged boards, staff, superintendents and ground crews. They were featured in promotional materials as a calling card of a city’s prosperity.”
A bygone era: picnicking among the dead
They also had a larger role in communities than they have today. People treated cemeteries as parks, strolling and picnicking among the dead and admiring the architecture of mausoleums and the poignant and poetic farewells etched on headstones.
“I joke that somewhere between “Dawn of the Dead” and “Thriller,” we lost that sense of cemeteries,” Bry said.” Most people won’t venture into one unless its out of necessity.”
That’s not the case everywhere. Easton Cemetery draws walkers, joggers and history buffs to its well-maintained 86 acres, which are tended by two full-time employees. Volunteer docents offer tours; volunteer gardeners tend planters, urns and foliage. An endowment covers many expenses, but the cemetery relies more and more on donations as burial income dwindles.
Easton Cemetery hints at what Fairview could be if money were available. Parts of it are lovely. Trexler’s grave, for one, is privately maintained by the Harry C. Trexler Trust, the grant agency that has contributed millions of dollars over the years to Allentown parks and charitable agencies across Lehigh County.
But Trexler Trust Executive Director Janet Roth said the agency can’t extend its influence beyond the grave of its founder.
“This subject comes up periodically,” she said. “We’re sympathetic, but because of the way we’re legally structured, we can only support organizations that are charitable agencies.”
A call for cooperation, and volunteers
As a practical matter, maintenance has to become a cooperative public effort among volunteers — scout troops, veterans organizations and the like, who can mow, cut weeds and fix fallen headstones.
That’s happening at Fairview, where Fatzinger and other volunteers, while pressuring Boyko to do more to maintain the grounds, have been hard at work. Before-and-after photos posted to Facebook show the kind of transformation possible with little more than weed trimmers.
Whether the effort will last is anyone’s guess. Michael Molovinsky, a popular blogger and former Allentown mayoral candidate, mounted his own call for restoration at Fairview a decade ago. Molovinsky has no relatives in the cemetery, but was researching local Jewish history at the time and was dismayed by the condition of the Jewish burial section when he came across it.
“It seemed to get better for a few years,” he said. “But things were better back then than they are now.”
Bry said the response to calls for help often fades after a time, and to create lasting change, communities have to restore cemeteries to a place of prominence.
Walking tours, garden plots and dog-walkers
That can be done in countless ways. Some communities offer cemetery walking tours. Others have created community garden plots among the headstones. One raised money by opening the grounds to dog-walkers and selling licenses.
“A cemetery can get pretty creative even if funds are limited,” said Bry, who also listed 5K races, car shows and a “Brush With Death” art exhibit among the fundraising attractions held around the country.
“You have to take the pulse of the individual community to determine if something is acceptable or not,” he said.
Boyko clearly cherishes the history of Fairview. He rattled off a number of prominent Allentown names — Mack, Hess, Leh — found on the tombstones. And he said he would support grass-roots efforts to raise money for the cemetery, which is zoned as park land.
“You don’t want to place the burden on the taxpayer,” he said. “If the county steps in, or the city, it would have to be manicured as a park. Can the city can really afford to put four full-time guys on that?”
Morning Call reporter Daniel Patrick Sheehan can be reached at 610-820-6598 or dsheehan@mcall.com
