Efforts to restore roadside crosses almost complete
Passing drivers honked their approval as Deb and Roger Pinion continued restoration work on a trio of roadside crosses south of Bucyrus on Ohio 4 earlier this week.
On Monday, Roger was installing solar-powered LED floodlights to illuminate the crosses at night – one of the final steps in preparation for a dedication ceremony planned for 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the site.
Deb, who led the Bucyrus Area Chamber of Commerce for many years, said she got the idea to restore the crosses this spring.
“I was driving past and something just said, ‘If you don't save them, they're going to fall down.' And that was the beginning of it,” she said.
“You couldn't even see them,” Roger said. “You could see the last cross coming from Bucyrus. You could see all of them coming into Bucyrus, but the trees had grown over.”
After an initial outpouring of support from the community, it took a while for work to get started, Deb said.
“Now all at once, boom, everything's happening,” she said.
The first step was to contact the property owner for permission, Deb said, “and he said absolutely.”
Next, Deb started getting word out to the community about her plan, including a visit to a Bucyrus City Council meeting on June 15.
At that meeting, she explained the crosses were among the 1,900 sets installed across the nation by the Rev. Bernard Coffindaffer over final nine years of his life, from 1984 to 1993. The ones on Ohio 4 were installed in 1986.
Of eight sets originally installed in the county, two others remain – one at a church near Crestline and the other on Ohio 602 north of North Robinson.
Though the Bucyrus crosses stand roughly 1.3 miles south of city limits on the east side of Ohio 4, Deb suggested to council members that restoration of the site would be a fitting way to mark the city's bicentennial.
“People started to say “I'll help' or ‘I'll donate' or whatever,” she said. Almost $6,000 was raised.
This fall, Hord Family Farms sent someone with a brush hog to clear overgrowth to the south of the crosses.
“That was full of poison ivy and all kinds of nasty things,” Deb said. “Nothing remains now.”
Bob Carle raked the side of the hill, her husband added.
Next, trees to the west of the crosses, which obscured them from view, had to be removed. Deb contracted with Oberlander's Tree and Landscape for the work, using funds contributed by an anonymous donor.
The crosses, which had begun to lean badly, needed to be straightened. Many people offered to help, but “something would come up.” So in late October, the Pinions did it themselves.
“He dug with the post hole digger down around the crosses, and we got them straightened up,” she said. “We had to have a little help from his old Ford F-150 to straighten that center one. It was more than we could push back into place.”
At about the same time, the trees were removed by Oberlander's.
With the trees gone, “they are brilliant standing there on that hillside,” Deb said.
Dean Leuthold painted the crosses, using yellow and blue paint donated by Sherwin-williams.
“We stood there and held his ladder so he wouldn't fall down; it was kind of windy,” she said.
Oberlander's has donated landscape tarping, which will be installed around the base of the crosses and covered with gravel, which was donated by Hord's.
“So they'll have a little bit of landscaping, and things won't grow up as bad anymore,” she said.
Deb said she has asked the Bucyrus Church of the Nazarene to handle maintenance of the crosses; the remainder of the money raised has been put into a fund to cover those costs.
The Pinions have their house on the market; they're planning to move to Westerville, they said. Roger called the cross restoration “our last project.” He estimated he's put 50 hours of work in on the effort.
During the dedication ceremony on Sunday, participants will be asked to help plant 250 daffodil bulbs on the hillside to the south of the crosses.
ggoble@gannett.com