Page 10 THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – Friday, May 17, 2019 ASK | from page 1 wife, Debra, are Saugus natives and longtime residents of the town. He was named the 2014 Saugus Man of the Year at that year’s Founder’s Day for untold hours of work maintaining some 400 veterans’ graves in the cemetery’s three military lots. Some highlights of this week’s interview follow. Q: You’re finally done, Gordie. You finally have the marble plaques or shields attached to the marble posts, and you have the lettering on each of the plaques, engraved in black so they stand out. It looks great! A: Thank you. Yeah, it sure does. Q: When you set out on this project three years ago, what was your ultimate goal? What did you hope to accomplish? A: Exactly what I got done. Q: Well, how has the project turned out? Did you expect it to be this good? You told me before you thought it’s “one of the best.” A: Actually, it came out a lot better than I thought it would, and yes, I’m very proud of it. Personally, I think it’s one of the best Civil War burial sites around. Q: What was the most challenging part of the project? A: Raising the money and getting the marble for the individual plaques for each of the Civil War veterans buried here. At one time, Massachusetts used to have a lot of marble in the western part of the state. Most of the marble quarries are closed down. But, fortunately, we got some help from David DeFilippo of Woodlawn Cemetery MonTHE VETERANS’ STONE: This centerpiece marker inside the Civil War burial plot names the 25 soldiers and sailors buried at the site. The last phase of the restoration project initiated by Gordon Shepard included the installation of 25 new plaques with the names of each of the Civil War veterans inscribed. uments in Everett. He was huge in helping me out to contact the right people in getting this marble. Q: You said that you could have gotten the VA [Veterans Administration] to pay for the replacement of the plaques or shields bearing the names of each the veterans buried here and it wouldn’t have cost you anything. Why didn’t you do that? A: This is what the G.A.R. These two plaques for Civil War veterans are the only ones of the 25 recently installed at Riverside Cemetery which include the date of the death. J& • Reliable Mowing Service • Spring & Fall Cleanups • Mulch & Edging • Sod or Seed Lawns • Shrub Planting & Trimming • Water & Sewer Repairs Joe Pierotti, Jr. S LANDSCAPE & MASONRY CO. Masonry - Asphalt • Brick or Block Steps • Brick or Block Walls • Concrete or Brick Paver Patios & Walkways • Brick Re-Pointing • Asphalt Paving www.JandSlandscape-masonry.com • Senior Discount • Free Estimates • Licensed & Insured 617-389-1490 Designing and Constructing Ideas that are “Grounds for Success” Landscaping [Grand Army of the Republic, General E.W. Hincks] Post 95 wanted. We wanted to restore it to the way it was 150 years ago, and this was not VA-approved. Q: So, you wanted to stick with the same design of the original burial plot, which was not VA-approved? A: Right. If you look at our markers, you’ll see that they are a lot better than what the VA had offered. Q: What kept you going all this time, continuing to enhance this Civil War burial site? A: I just wanted to get it back to looking as good as the first day it existed. Q: If you had to do it over, would you do it any differently? A: No, I don’t think so. I like the way it came out. I think it really looks great. Only one thing more – if possible – it would be nice to put curbing around the plot to protect the grounds and the sprinkler system. Q: So, what are the features that make this so special now? A: For the first time in many, many years, people can walk into the Civil War burial site and read the names of each of the soldiers or sailors. Everything is uniform. Every post is the same size and so are the plaques. Q: So, I guess the big thing with this phase of the project is that you can finally read the names of all 25 Civil War veterans – soldiers and sailors – when before you had quite a bit information that you couldn’t read on the plaques. A: Yes. Out of the 25, there are probably 10 that were completely unidentifiable. You couldn’t read anything on them at all. Then there were another 15 where you could read some parts of it. For some, you probably could read 40 percent of what was on it, and there were some that you could read, but within five years, you wouldn’t be able to read them at all. So, I decided that all of them should be redone, and we have finally done that. Q: How long did it take you to get this project done? A: It’s taken three years, and finally we got it done in April. I kept it to as close to being original as possible without changing it, especially on the plaque inscriptions. There was more information that we could have added for each of the men: like where they fought and when they died. But if it wasn’t on the plaque, we didn’t mention it. I didn’t want to change it – no more, no less. Everything you see on each of the plaques is the same. We wanted to preserve history, not change history. Only on two of the plaques, do you ASKS | SEE PAGE 11
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