I have had a connection with Westwood Cemetery since my early formative years. In 1951, my parents moved our family to a house on the south side of Sanford Avenue, in Emerson. The properties across the street from us on the north side of Sanford Avenue abutted the cemetery property. I started by exploring the woods to the southeast of the cemetery proper. There were two ponds on the cemetery property. If you were quiet, a walk around the ponds might be rewarded by frog, turtle, or fish sightings. These were things that appealed to boys between the ages of four and thirteen in the days before the internet.
You could go fishing in the ponds during warm weather. In the winter, we ice skated on the ponds, and even went sledding from the hill of the big pond section onto the pond. Large crowds of skaters were sometimes drawn to the ponds on Sundays during the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1970s, the ice stopped freezing sufficiently to permit safe ice skating.
Trips to the cemetery would sometimes lead to encounters with strange interesting people. One day I found a sharp-dressed young African-American man sitting beneath a willow tree that was once situated on the north bank of the little pond. He had a flashy-looking automobile parked nearby, and he was playing a pair of bongo drums. In retrospect, he looked something like Little Richard did in the 1950s, only in casual attire. Another time, I found an older gray-bearded African-American man under the same willow tree, fishing. He was catching catfish, which he said were very tasty to eat.
Then there was the cemetery superintendent, George Thraves. George was a Brooklyn, New York native who had migrated to New Jersey and settled in the Pascack Valley. I don't remember when I first met George, but he was a fixture at the cemetery for decades. George seemed to enjoy talking with children from the area, as long as he was not too harried with work. And he spoke openly with us about his life experiences. Think of George as a German-American variant of the Chef character from the South Park television series.
I remember two girls from my grammar school who I saw in the cemetery occasionally. George frequently worked shirtless when he went down into the hole with a shovel after he finished opening a grave site with a backhoe. The girls would ask George to flex his muscles for them, and they would compliment him on his physique.
One of my brothers once told me about an incident that he witnessed in the cemetery. George caught several boys skinny-dipping in the little pond, and took their clothes. He had caught the same boys swimming previously, and wanted to teach them a lesson. George told the boys to send their parents to see him if they wanted their clothes back. The boys were last seen running north across Old Hook Road, in their birthday suits.
I remember visiting the cemetery one Sunday many years later, probably in 1987, and seeing George at the cemetery office. I was surprised to see him on his day off. He explained that he was going to be retiring in a few days, and moving to California. I wished him well with his retirement, said goodbye, and that was the last time I saw him.
I sometimes took early morning walks on the paved cemetery roads in the years that followed. It was an alternative to walking on the street, and having to compete with motor vehicle traffic at intersections. When I started researching nineteenth century local history around 2002, I noticed many familiar names on monuments. I soon realized that the cemetery was a key element of my research. And the residents whose monuments I was viewing were crying out for their stories to be told. This book is a tribute to those residents.
