Fundraising drive helps repave cemetery roads
CHICORA — Chicora's Hemphill Cemetery is sporting a network of freshly repaved roads after a fundraising drive headed up by three civic organizations raised more than $30,000 in less than three months.
The effort was a hometown project by the Chicora American Legion, the Chicora Moose Lodge, the borough and the Chicora Volunteer Fire Department, which organized the drive after learning of the conundrum facing cemetery board-members: a road in need of fixing and little to no money to do the work.
“I'm tickled to death,” said John Callihan, president of the cemetery board. “It's fantastic. How do you say it? If they wouldn't have done it, it wouldn't have been done. We would have done a little bit of patching and so forth and still had a mess.”
Callihan said the board had been aware of the cemetery's aging network of roads for some time, but low interest rates in recent years have reduced the earnings of the organization's perpetual care fund and forced it to defer any major work.
“There's nothing out there paying any interest, and we sometimes don't make enough money in a year's time ... to cover yearly expenses,” he said.
Before the fundraising effort was pitched, board members had agreed to dip into the cemetery's perpetual care fund — an interest-earning account — to do some minor repairs to the cemetery's roads.
But Callihan said word of the cemetery's problem got around and his cousin, Fred Callihan, Chicora American Legion vice commander, came to him with a proposal.
Fred Callihan wanted to work with the Chicora Moose Lodge, the fire department and borough council to raise enough money to completely fix the cemetery's roads — something everyone initially agreed seemed hard to do.
“In the beginning we felt it would probably be too hard,” Fred Callihan said.
When fundraisers, with the help of volunteers and a Boy Scout troop, sent out about 150 letters in early August, Callihan said, they thought raising the full amount could take as long as a year.
But about 10 weeks later, the group raised $32,000, and Hemphill was getting new roads.
Fred Callihan said he credits the drive's success to the people of Chicora and his team of organizers, who drew enthusiasm from borough residents Mary Twentier, Marta Barger and Missy Easley — three young volunteers who became deeply involved in the effort.
“Boy, they dug in and came with great ideas and enthusiasm,” Callihan said.
The group held a bean bag tournament, a talent contest and a fun night in conjunction with the Moose Lodge that drew large crowds.
The donations themselves, Callihan said, came “from all over” and varied in size. The largest donation of $4,000 came from a former Chicora resident who lives in Maryland, Callihan said.
The donor requested to remain anonymous, he said, but Callihan believes the same thing motivated everyone: a strong connection to the borough.
“We told people what we were doing, and they wanted to donate,” Callihan said. “We weren't going to badger anybody.”
Hemphill Cemetery was founded in the 1800s and is home to “a large amount of veterans,” Callihan said. There are several cemeteries near the borough, but Hemphill is the only one in the municipality.
“Chicora is one of the few places in the world that this could take place,” Callihan said. “Everybody pulled together in general and got this done. We were overwhelmed with the response.”
