HOULTON, Maine — Just after 1 p.m. Friday on a section of Evergreen Cemetery called “Angel’s Hill,” Ralph Boyington of Houlton negotiated his lawn mower along a downhill grade as his colleague James Wallace stood nearby with a weed whacker.
On the 81 degree day, both were caked with the grass and dirt of the graveyard, a place that Boyington, 41, of Houlton, has worked seasonally for the past 17 years. Wallace, 37, has made the short drive from his home in Linneus to work on the cemetery over the last three seasons.
With Boyington manning the lawn mower and Wallace trimming and mowing when needed, the two are a dedicated tag-team who carefully maintain municipal resting places with a sense of duty to the deceased while also caring for the needs of the living, Milton Cone, the town’s fire chief, ambulance director and cemetery superintendent, said Friday.
“You will never find a more dedicated crew than these two, and they certainly do not get the recognition they deserve,” he said. “They are the unsung heroes in this place.”
Besides the 68-acre Evergreen Cemetery, the town has three other cemeteries — Soldier’s, Bray and Presbyterian — all of which are three acres or less that are maintained by the cemetery crew.
Evergreen Cemetery, while flat in some places, also consists of a number of dips and hills and awkward slants that can be challenging for someone cutting the grass on a riding mower. It is divided in half, with each parcel located on either side of the street, and it takes a week of mowing and trimming per side to get each completed, Wallace said. Each week, they also try to fit in the other smaller cemeteries.
Some of the spots, such as Angel’s Hill, Soldier’s Hill, The Gulch and Rich Man’s Hill, have been named by past and current employees. After 17 years, caring for them is no longer a challenge for Boyington, who is a “master,” according to Cone.
“He is on that mower 40 hours a week,” said Cone. “A lot of people think these men have easy jobs because they are out in the fresh air all day, but they don’t factor in spending it in the sun, the wind and the rain. They also help with burials, reseeding, repairing water lines, trimming trees and fixing roads.”
Much more than that, Cone said, he is continually impressed by the way the men spend hours making sure the cemetery is in perfect shape for Memorial Day and other holidays, or the way they go out of their way to help a genealogist find a grave, or to help a family that would like extra help with a loved one’s grave.
“I can’t say enough great things about them,” he said.
Boyington said that mowing “the gulch,” a portion of the cemetery where the burial ground is angled steeply downhill, is the hardest part of his caretaking responsibilities.
“You really have to know what you’re doing or you’re going down in the gulch right along with the tractor,” he joked.
Cone said, an unwritten requirement in any cemetery employee’s contract is that one day, the worker will have to help bury someone he is close to. That moment came for both Boyington and Cone back in 2008, he said, when they had to inter Kenneth Britton, who was the sexton at Evergreen Cemetery and had worked for the town since 1978.
“He was my second in command and he was Ralph’s boss,” said Cone. “He was a very vital part of our operations here for some time. So that was a very difficult day for everyone.”
On Friday, just before returning to his mower, Boyington moved his cooler full of water off the seat and back into a spot away from the dangerous parts of the machine. He said that over the years, he has never had any issues with heat stroke or misadventures in “the gulch.”
“I’ve learned some tricks to stay on top of the ground and not under it,” he said.
