They are the keepers of the other City of Frederick — where the duties are plenty, the residents are permanent, tourism is steady and business sells itself.
The staff of Frederick's 157-year-old Mount Olivet Cemetery consider themselves the shepherds of one of the oldest, and one of the most beautiful, cemeteries on the East Coast. All live on the grounds or within a 10-mile radius of the cemetery, which they say over the years has become a home away from home.
The superintendent
J. Ronald Pearcey, 62, took on the post of superintendent of Mount Olivet Cemetery in 1983. Ever since, he has overseen everyday operations of the final resting place of more than 37,000 people.
"It feels like you're in your own city — we have to take care of our own roads, buildings, residents, everything," Pearcey said. "At one time, it was a lot simpler than it is now. When people passed away, we found the cemetery lots, buried them and that's about all it entailed."
Pearcey, who moved to Frederick in 1970, started working at the cemetery in 1966 as an office assistant.
Pearcey knows that like death, it's the unexpected and the big decisions that make his work a little more interesting. It is he who has the final word on situations when a family can't pay to bury their loved ones, and breaks the news to people that they can't do things such as be buried with their motorcycles. (That request was submitted and denied.)
He also finds himself playing police, dealing with disgruntled family members who report thefts of flowers from graves.
"We're here to help the people in any way that we can," he said, "[but] we're still a business, and we have to run it like a business."
Pearcey, whose first wife is buried at Mount Olivet, lives on the grounds of the cemetery, where he too will be buried one day — a more practical than morbid decision, he assures.
He said that the only thing that makes him feel that his job is odd is when people ask him odd questions. (Note: He doesn't see ghosts outside his window at night, and the 6-foot-deep burial is a myth.) Other than that, he says, it's just a job — with the same challenges and satisfactions as any other.
"This is my life," he said. "This has been my home. I don't really know anything else."
The salesman
Scott Baker knows that death is a self-sustaining business. So, when a grieving family walks into the Mount Olivet offices, he has to sell himself.
"Everybody's going to die, no matter what way you look at it," Baker said. "But if I can make you laugh, or feel comfortable — take your mind off of [death] for a second — I did my job."
For the last 10 years, Baker, 50, has been the first contact for burials at the cemetery, taking calls and meeting with families so that on burial day, all of the details are plotted.
"It's really hard, because you don't know who's on the other side of that phone or door," he said.
But, he finds comic relief, if appropriate, is the key seller. Lying out in the grass to help families visualize exactly how their loved one would be positioned has been his hit stunt.
Other times, Baker simply takes to the cemetery with families, equipped with a map of available plots, and walks around until the perfect place — usually by the road or under a tree — sticks out to them.
"I've definitely been out there for a while with a person going from tree to tree trying to decide which one their [loved one] would like," he said. "People take it pretty seriously."
Baker sometimes has the challenge of telling people what resting place that they cannot afford — plots range from $1,100 for individuals to $17,000 for families. Prices also vary by row.
"A hard thing is when I have to remind people not to go overboard," Baker said. "But, I understand that it's [a] final resting spot."
Baker also has his own plots secure in the cemetery — he refers to the area as "right down the street from Pearcey" — and said that at the end of the day, he simply has to view his job as just a part of life, with a bit of humor.
"I know it's different, but we have our own little things to get us through," he said. "Otherwise, I'd be drunk all the time."
The gravedigger
Jesse Shank can turn a perfectly manicured bloc of grass into a 4-foot hole in half an hour; a heap of dirt into a perfectly matted rectangle in 15 minutes.
When he receives the grave order from Baker, Shank heads into the cemetery to carve out the perfect 11-foot-long, 40-inch-wide rectangle in which a coffin will be lowered, sealed and covered.
It is just one of the many tasks that Shank, 63, takes on, as the 47-year veteran of Mount Olivet carries out final preparations for the recently deceased to be committed to the ground. After a grave is dug, Shank sets up tents for services, the lowering device and six chairs.
It's almost a science, which is convenient, because to Shank, his job as a gravedigger is just steady work. Even as he stood in his own mother's grave making sure that the walls were paved and clean, he was simply doing his job. Shank's son also works at the cemetery.
"I have a lot of people come up and say, ‘How do you do this?'" he said. "And I just say, ‘Somebody has to do it.'"
"You have your good days and your bad days, but it's not a hard work or an easy work — it's steady work."
While he has no particular attachment to the burial process, he does know that the job is important to those who'd rather not be reminded of their loved ones' fresh departure.
"I think about the people," he said. "And the best I can do is to treat everybody the same."
The groundskeeper
Being a lawnmower is not a job that most are reluctant to reveal — but Rick Reever assures that when it's mowing among the dead, it can generate some discomfort.
"When I first started working here, it did feel odd," Reever said. "I didn't want to tell people where I worked."
But 11 years later, Reever, 31, takes pride in his job as one of the main groundskeepers at Mount Olivet. He makes sure that once Shank has settled the dirt, and the grass has made its decorative debut, it remains green and freshly mowed.
Having been a landscaper before working for the cemetery, Reever said that he went into the job with a strong foundation, but that maneuvering in and out of headstones is not an easy task. He holds that there's no science to the job, though it's far from mowing your front lawn. "I'm patient when it comes to the stones," Reever said, adding that he hasn't had too many close calls. "But, I've done it so much, that I just get on and go."
Reever covers about 10 acres each day, he said, more when a big holiday is approaching. The only challenge to the job, he said, is from Mother Nature. Heavy rainfall in the last few weeks has delayed a lot of the grounds work, which solicited some negative feedback during Mother's Day visits, he said.
"I feel good when I do a good job and get compliments, and when I can't, I feel terrible" he said. "We figured out early on that you can't make everybody happy. But, it does make you work even harder."
No matter what the feedback, Reever says that it's a constant reminder of what his job is all about. "We're here to take care of people's property and families," Reever said. "If you can't do that, you can't do the job."
E-mail Erica L. Green at egreen@gazette.net.
