RITTMAN — Landscapers zipped around with their riding and stand-on mowers as others edged the acres and acres of manicured grass with weed trimmers.
Tommy Staley loaded flags wrapped around poles onto the back of a pick up truck, as Chris Eby and Jason Shelton lifted a podium emblazoned with the logo for the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery onto a truck.
Equipment operator Eli Bauman and caretakers Jimmy Keefer and Cody Schar moved and shoveled dirt near the observation deck at the Memorial Trail in the cemetery in order to prepare the ground for fresh sod.
All of this was going on simultaneously Thursday as the National Cemetery staff and contractors prepared the sacred ground for Sunday’s Memorial Day service. National cemeteries scheduled …show more content…
It might seem odd to some, but to Brian Cheesman, a foreman, Memorial Day is just another day at the office. That is not to say the day is insignificant. That would be far from the truth for him.
Eby, a Navy veteran, expressed it this way: “Every day is Memorial Day to us. We can’t let people forget.”
“We try to have the cemetery ready every day for every family that comes in,” Cheesman said. While Memorial Day is a nationally recognized holiday, “The cemetery shouldn’t be any better for (the holiday) than it was yesterday. We try to give that same respect and upkeep every day.”
It’s an honor and privilege to do what he does, said Shelton, who served in the Air Force. He recalled how a former worker viewed those families coming in for interments as “customers.”
“They are not customers, they are our family members; they are part of our family,” Shelton said. “When they come the gate, for some it is the worst day of their life.”
There are times when there are 15 to 16 services a day at the cemetery, and Eby said it would be easy to fall into an assembly line mentality. “But, we make it personal,” he said. “In school, they teach us we have one last chance to get it