Cemetery event offers look at Pasadena’s past
Volunteers tell the stories of those buried at Crown Hill Cemetery, a site that dates to 1906 and includes some prominent citizens
Mike Murphey likes to visit old cemeteries and wonder about the lives of those whose names are inscribed on the headstones.
“Just imagining these people. Each cemetery has a million stories,” says Murphey, president of the Crown Hill Cemetery Association, which maintains a six-acre Pasadena site that dates to 1906 and includes about 600 graves.
About 100 visitors at Voices of the Past in the Crown Hill Cemetery, 813 N. Richey, didn’t have to imagine. The annual familyfriendly event features volunteers telling the stories of people buried in the historic cemetery.
“We’re studying the people who are buried there. We’re trying to teach back to the younger children about this history,” he said.
Volunteer re-enactors in period garb stood beside some of the graves to portray individuals who in one way or another were vital to the development of Pasadena. Props used in the presentations ranged from fruit in a basket to laundry hanging on the line.
At one grave, a man and woman related the story of World War II soldier Ben Guttierez, the only military veteran buried in the cemetery who died in battle. A member of the Army’s 160th Infantry Division, Gutierrez was killed at age 23 in 1944 as American troops fought to recapture the island of Guam from Japanese forces. Pasadena at the time had about 1,500 residents.
Murphey said Gutierrez’s aunt and uncle recently spoke to him during a visit to the cemetery.
At another stop at the Voices event, visitors heard the story of the Pitts family. They owned a big furniture store in the city. Murphey remembers them from the late 1950s and early ’60s.
Other figures depicted at the event included Eula May Pitts Brockman, Emma McMasters, and Bama Pitts, whowas involved in a local chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star.
Buried in the cemetery are veterans of the Civil War, both Union and Confederate soldiers, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II and the Korean War, according to the association’s website.
“Although approximately 650 burials were reportedly made at Crown Hill, only about 420names can currently be identified with about 400 of those names and specific sites that can be matched,” the website states on the cemetery’s history page. “Work on improving the burial listings and grave site identification continues.”
Murphey believes it is important that the stories of such people be told.
“Without any one of those, Pasadena would have been changed,” he said of those buried at Crown Hill.