Path between Mr. Phillips and Mr. Himmelberger.
Fence post with wire fence.
View from the road.
Reading Eagle: Tim Leedy | Former Berks Career & Technology Center students Dante
Altavilla, left, and Kyle Drobeck, center, and county Coroner Dennis J. Hess at
the gate that marks the Potter's Field cemetery in Cumru Township. Altavilla
and Drobeck helped build the arch, which was unveiled Thursday.
County officials unveil 'Potter's Field' arch in Cumru
Township
Friday October 30, 2015 12:01 AM
If Berks County Coroner Dennis J.
Hess had not known its history, the field off Cedar Top Road overlooking Route
724 in Cumru Township would have just been a good place from which to watch
fireworks displays.
Although there are no grave markers
or signs, Hess, long before he was elected coroner, knew that people were
buried in the field, which is one of two potter's fields that were used to bury
the remains of the indigent and unidentified.
"My brother-in-law used to live
right up the road," Hess said Thursday, standing in the field that offers
a view of the annual Mifflin Community Days July Fourth fireworks.
A few years ago, a state police
detective asked Hess to exhume the graves of two unidentified females, one of
whom was a confirmed murder victim. Hess arranged for an expert in forensic exhumations
to come in and lead a team in locating, then carefully unearthing, the unmarked
graves. The victims' bones were sent to a laboratory for DNA analysis, which
confirmed their identities as two Philadelphia runaways.
On Thursday, the two-year anniversary
of the grave exhumation, Hess and other county officials unveiled a metal arch
sign that marks the site as simply "Potter's Field."
Hess said the grave exhumation set
him on a quest to improve the appearance of what he called one of the most
forgotten but important cemeteries in the county.
"I think it's time we brought
some kind of dignity back to this cemetery and the people who were buried
there," he said.
Last spring, he contacted the Berks
Career & Technology Center to design and build a sign as a first step in
upgrading the cemetery.
Hess provided the general concept of
a large metal arch sign with scrollwork, and the instructors and their students
took it from there.
Students in a few different programs
at the BCTC campus in Bern Township worked on the project. Dale Roberts'
welding students fabricated it over two months, using the design created by
Mike Stein's advertising and design technology students, said Katherine
Reimert, an instructor assistant at the technology school.
Automobile collision and repair
technology students prepped and painted it, she said.
Two of the welding students who
built the sign before graduating in June came out Thursday to see it unveiled
at its permanent home.
Dante Altavilla, 18, of Exeter
Township and Kyle Drobeck, 18, of Wernersville said they enjoyed working on the
project that has a connection to the community.
"I was actually excited to come
see it," Drobeck said. "We saw it standing in the shop but seeing it
in the field is really cool."
County Commissioner Kevin S.
Barnhardt said the county ordered 67 bricks, each bearing the name, if
available, of a person buried at the site, from Glen-Gery Brick, Perry
Township.
"This was part of the Berks
County Almshouse, which is now the Berks Heim," Barnhardt explained.
"There were hundreds of acres here owned by the county.
"Actually, where Governor
Mifflin school (campus) is now is where the almshouse was, and this is where
they oftentimes buried folks from the nursing home who had no immediate family.
And, the coroner also buried people here."
The bricks were placed along
perimeter of the property, but officials are considering placing them in cement
under the sign arch in the middle of the field.
Hess was pleased with the
student-built sign and promised it is just the beginning of upgrading the
field.
"I really think this is the
start of the whole thing of bringing dignity back to his cemetery," he
said.
Contact Steven Henshaw: 610-371-5028
or shenshaw@readingeagle.com.
