Tales of Valley Center’s Past Lay Just Below This Surface

The stillness of the Valley Center Cemetery was broken by the scream of a power saw as one of the oldest living residents of the hilltop resting place bit the dust this week.

The Monterey pine that has stood guard over generations of the valley’s dead fell victim first to a beetle infestation and then to the power tools of two volunteer executioners.

“We tried to save her. Spent a couple hundred dollars on her. But it was too late,” explained Jack Bose, a member of the cemetery district board.

T-Bone Jones and Terry Bozarth, both off-duty county employees, began the cutting Monday, but have postponed the coup de grace until this weekend.

Jones, who acknowledges that his real name is Harold, “but nobody would know me if you called me that,” knows a lot of the cemetery’s permanent residents. He figured that he’d cut down the diseased tree on his own time for his departed friends.

“Where’s Larry at?” he quipped. “I gotta go over and stomp on his grave.” Larry was a working buddy and Jones saluted his fallen comrade before he climbed the towering pine to renew its dissection.

Bozarth has a link to the cemetery, too. His grandfather, John Goswick, bought the place next door at a tax sale. The “place” was formerly the first church in Valley Center, built in 1884, and later turned into a school.

Bozarth recalls that “maybe 20 years ago or so, I used to come visit and I would play here,” among the gravestones that date to 1883.

Dick Mortweet, the new cemetery superintendent, has only a few months’ experience at the tiny burial place, but he already has learned a lot about it.

Sarah Dinwiddie was believed to be the first person buried here, he said, although the readable tombstones contain other 1883 interments, Mortweet said.

Among them were Ollive May Harrison. Born Sept. 25, 1881. Died July 24, 1883. And, George Herbst, who died June 25, 1883, at “60 Yrs. 7 Mos. 7 Ds.”

The grave markers hint at many stories never told. There’s John Henry Breedlove, who died in 1908. Susan Breedlove, born 1810, died l888. And four Breedlove babies, unnamed and marked only by small cement markers.

Mortweet remembers the first burial that struck home: “It was Charley. I dropped into the Stagecoach for a cup of coffee and asked where old Charley was. They said, ‘Oh, didn’t you know? Charley died over the weekend.’ ”

Later, Mortweet found himself digging a narrow, deep grave for Charley’s ashes. “The people at the church” had collected the $460-some needed to see to it that

Charley had a resting place, and they were collecting more to get a small grave marker for his remains.

“Charley was a caretaker at the trailer park, and didn’t have any family to speak of,” Mortweet said. “It was nice of the church folks to bury him up here.”

Mortweet, 58, came to Valley Center two years ago, willing to work for his room and board in order to drop out of the stressful life he had come from--a high school teacher in the Midwest for 27 1/2 years.

“I was burned out,” Mortweet confessed. “When they offered free medical and dental coverage to the first 200 people who signed up,” Mortweet was first in line to seek retirement.

Late last year, when the former cemetery superintendent went on disability and vacation leave, Mortweet took over the cemetery job. When, after three months, the former superintendent failed to reappear, Mortweet was given the job permanently.

Weekdays, from 8 a.m. until noon, he tends the tiny cemetery, preparing grave sites, tending the grass and plants, picking up after picnickers and keeping an eye out for the vandals that recently stole the American flag that flies perpetually over the Valley Center dead.

Tougher to Swipe

Another flag has been acquired and, this time, vandals will have to be more inventive. Mortweet has knotted the halyards high above the average reach and greased the flagpole.

“Anyone wants that flag will have to work for it,” he vowed.

During his off hours each afternoon, Mortweet ranges the Valley Center countryside aboard his mule, Becky. He had always wanted a horse, he confesses, but his first purchase sickened and died. So, after talking it over with a more knowledgeable equestrian named “Big Jim,” Mortweet purchased Becky, “the best darn riding mule in Valley Center.” Now, they are a familiar sight around the valley.

The highlight of his short tenure as cemetery superintendent was a military funeral with a 21-gun salute. It was seven guns, actually, Mortweet explained, but they fired three volleys while a distant bugler sounded taps.

It’s not lonely at the cemetery, Mortweet said. There’s always someone coming up from Miller Road to visit their loved ones’ graves or just to stand and enjoy the view from the hilltop.

His first mistake, a sunken grave site, resulted from inexperience, Mortweet said.

“I just misjudged,” he said, and placed too little earth back over the vault that held the casket. “When I get the time,” he said, he will remove the amorphous sod atop the site and tamp in more earth to even up the grave site with its neighbors.

The cement vaults required in the county-owned cemetery weigh 1,800 pounds and, like the 8-foot by 3-foot holes that hold them, require mechanical might in the form of a backhoe. Mortweet hasn’t learned to operate the rig yet, but he digs the smaller graves for cremation remains and infants with the help of a shovel and a coffee can.

There are some mysteries among the markers. Several bear the single word “unknown,” and one is marked “German.” A prisoner of war, perhaps? Mortweet does not know. He has probed, at times, at sites he was preparing to excavate only to find them already occupied. By whom? The records do not show.

If Mortweet had a favorite among the sleeping occupants of the Valley Center Cemetery, it probably would be Old Cowboy Ed Wright, 1881-1975, whose grave carries the epitaph: “End of the Trail.” Valley Center’s library historical files say Wright was once a world-champion bronc rider and later a crackerjack rodeo clown.

Or, he might choose the unusual marker of a motorcyclist struck down in his prime. It carries inscriptions of love from “Mom & Dad & The Gang” and sports his miniature chopper wrench and his Harley Davidson’s wings insignia.

Judy Haynes, who lives just down the road and comes often to the cemetery “to visit my friends,” stopped by to watch the death of the massive pine tree. “A shame, a real shame,” she said of the ancient tree’s demise.

Haynes, a 30-year resident of the valley, plans some day to lie on this quiet hillside with her departed neighbors, and is seriously thinking of buying a plot and a headstone now “so that I could see how it will look” and so that “no one will have to bother about it when I’m gone.”

Mortweet agrees with Haynes that it would be nice to have a niche prepared in advance of the inevitable. He can point out several markers that bear the birth dates but lack the death dates of their future occupants.

There are about 1,500 graves in the acre or two of hilltop ground that is the Valley Center Cemetery and has been for more than 100 years. And, it is the place where Valley Center folks expect to come to rest, eventually.