There is something about a cemetery that serves as home to both a department store president’s mausoleum, and to those whose remains are marked by nothing but blades of grass. There are babies and children, rabbis and soldiers. The parents of The Last of the Red Hot Mamas. There’s a young woman killed by bullets intended for the guy whose car she was riding in, and, at least one murderer.
As the Friends of Zion Hill Cemetery puts it: “The cemetery tells the story of the various immigrants — Armenians, Russian and German Jews, Irish, Italians, Chinese, Cape Verdean, Puerto Rican, Jamaican — who came to work in the factories and tobacco fields in the Connecticut River Valley.”
These 24 acres are in Frog Hollow, a working class neighborhood that is regarded by some as too gritty, and though it has community and life today, is not treated with half the nostalgia dished out for Front Street.
In it is the graveyard, a place that “too many had given up on,” the Friends group says, which is what makes the effort to bring new life to Zion Hill exciting. There have been litter clean ups and a walking tour, all within the last few months.
The next move will be a gateway beautification project. Volunteers will plant bushes, bulbs, and perennials at the cemetery’s Zion and Ward entrance during September.
They have also launched a fundraiser (through October 24) to cover gateway improvements, purchase benches, and plant trees on the cemetery’s south side. Suggested donation amounts are not written in stone.
If you would like to be a problem solver, reach out to Friends of Zion Hill Cemetery’s founder Carey Shea to learn about more ways to get involved.
