Cleveland's Calvary

the autumn colors were more vibrant in 2009

Calvary is Latin for skull. The hill outside Jerusalem, where Jesus Christ was crucified was called the place of the Skull. Legend has Adam buried there. Jesus' tomb is there surrounded by the Church of the Sepulcher. It is a understandable name for a Christian Cemetery. Cavalry are horse soldiers. It takes a while for a new English, or French speaker to differentiate the two.

Calvary Cemetery at 10,000 Miles Avenue in Cleveland is by far the largest in surface area and in burials in the county—three hundred acres, and 300,000 burials. It opened late in the 19th century.

A lot of people's closest and dearest relatives are buried there. There are relatively few 'famous' people: a couple of Slovenes: Frankie Yankovic the polka king, Frank Lausche, mayor, governor and senator. Judge Frank Battisti, who desegregated the public schools in Cleveland, which began the last decline of Cleveland, before national Republican politics, is buried there. The Polish Olympic athlete 'Stella Walsh' is there. Stella was murdered in a parking lot, in senseless street crime. There was a brief extended notoriety from the autopsy, she was born with anomalous genitals. A few other athletes are there too: Johnny Kilbane, the featherweight; Bill 'Wamby' Wambsganss, second baseman who made an unassisted triple play in the 1920 World Series, and had been Ray Chapman's* double play partner; outfielder Ed Delahanty who went over the Niagara Falls, after being kicked off a train in 1903. Since most hours there is no people there, and it is a big parcel of land in an urban area, there is a good deal of animal life that can be found. This part of the cemetery has pavers as gravestones that allow for riding mowers. Lausche has one such.

big enough to have a railroad bridge and tunnel

Saint Hyacinth's Catholic War Veterans' Post 496 Memorial

Cleveland's Catholics have suffered a brutal reduction of parishes, and episcopal looting. St. Hyacinth's was one such parish. Their Catholic War Veterans' Post 496 took several months of negotiations to have the memorial placed in the cemetery. Also another fight saved St. Margaret of Hungary's multi-statued memorial from being dismembered and sold. Negotiations brought the memorials to Calvary. Recently, a political relations embarrassment [in which two war memorial tablets (they were painted wood, and had no sales value) were left behind at St. Catharine's to be part of its demolition] was attempted to be solved by a similar manœuvre facilitated by a television reporter trying to save the diocese's official face. He succeeded partially, but at least one diocesan employee engaged in ridiculous nastiness to the point of malevolence.
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*Chapman's wife and daughter are at Calvary, Chapman is at Lake View