Rick Sebak produces, writes and narrates documentaries for WQED tv13, as well as national specials for PBS. His programs are available online or call 800/274-1307.

Six Feet Under

Local cemeteries are alive with history, famous names and cool tales.

photography by Richard Kelly

Andy Warhol once said, "I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph and no name. Well, actually I'd like it to say 'figment.'" Instead, his family got him a modest stone monument, nothing artful or unusual. It says "Andy Warhol" in block letters with the dates beneath.

So the celebrated artist who said everybody will be famous for 15 minutes is buried in the unassuming, small St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Church Cemetery at the intersection of Connor Road and Route 88 in the South Hills. Sometimes people leave Campbell's soup cans and other pop-art-y objects at his grave. It's just one of those Pittsburgh surprises that Warhol is here and not in New York City. He's in a humble cemetery in Castle Shannon.

I've always wanted to make a TV program about cemeteries. They fascinate and attract me, but I have to admit: I'm not a frequent visitor to my own family's gravesites, which are not that far from Warhol's, out at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Peters Township. My dad and my brother Skip are buried there, and all four of my grandparents. But that cemetery is a "memorial park," with markers flush to the ground. And that's OK, certainly easier for the grass cutters, but maybe I've just seen too many movies, or I'm too much of a traditionalist. If I'm going to visit a cemetery, I want to see old-fashioned markers, upright tombstones, maybe some mausoleums or ancient fenced-in family plots - not just bronze plaques that lie flat on the ground.

For much of 2005, I've been visiting cemeteries across America, meandering among monuments, talking to people who manage and love these places, and working with my trusty documentary team to gather images and sounds for a new PBS documentary we're calling "A Cemetery Special," which premieres this month on WQED tv13.

Right: Andy Warhol's final resting place in Castle Shannon has become a place of pilgrimage for his fans, who leave notes and even Campbell's soup cans in memory of the pop artist.

We've traveled from Key West to Fairbanks, from Georgia to Vermont, learning how cemeteries house all sorts of history and amazing artwork. Cemeteries can be beautiful landscapes or well-traveled public spaces, but they all give you a chance to pause, to remember excellent people you've known, to marvel at all who've lived and died, to stand near the rich and famous, and perhaps to contemplate your own mortality.

But this TV special is not exactly the show I've long wanted to produce. For years I have hoped to make a local program that would celebrate cemeteries around here - graveyards and plots where Pittsburghers of all stripes have been permanently planted and marked for posterity. I've never been able to raise the money for such a local show, but I know some of the cemeteries I'd want to include, and you may want to check them out yourself.

Start downtown at the burial ground beside Trinity Cathedral on Sixth Avenue. There's evidence that this whole block in our city center was once a "tumulus," or ancient burial mound. When 18th-century soldiers and settlers started staying at Fort Duquesne and Fort Pitt, they also began burying the area's earliest European immigrants in the tumulus, too. Although it's believed as many as 4,000 folks were interred at this location, most of the remains were moved to other, not-so-city-central cemeteries in the 19th century.

Still, markers at Trinity today commemorate important Pittsburgh pioneers such as John Ormsby and his family (many of whom are memorialized in the South Side where streets - such as Sarah and Jane - are named after them). Also buried here is Nathaniel Bedford, one of our first physicians who also helped to start higher education in Western Pennsylvania. But the stone for Chief Red Pole of the Shawnee nation may be the most memorable marker still here. A signer of the 1795 Treaty of Greenville - which helped establish peace with natives in "Ohio Country" - Red Pole died in 1797, and records show that an earlier tombstone included his Shawnee name, Misquacoonacaw.

The first permanent European settlers in this part of Pennsylvania were usually put to final rest in graveyards next to churches. Beulah Presbyterian Church in Churchill has a good old cemetery - this year celebrating its 221st year - where many of the markers are now hard to read (sandstone and marble don't weather well in Pittsburgh winters, not to mention environmental hazards that were more common a few decades ago). The graves here include an impressive list of Revolutionary War soldiers and veterans, including Gen. John Johnston, who is thought to have been secretary to George Washington during the Revolution. Col. Dunning McNair, state legislator and founder of Wilkinsburg, is buried here. Directly behind the old brick chapel is the Graham family plot, which is not necessarily important in itself, except that the granddaughter of one of the deceased took the time in 1918 to document the information on every marker at this graveyard. Her work is still appreciated by historians, genealogists, church members and local cemetery aficionados today.

There actually may be too much local history in many old church burial grounds nearby. As a kid, I know I spent too many Memorial Day mornings in my Cub Scout uniform listening to tiresome speeches at Bethel Cemetery, 17 acres beside Bethel Presbyterian Church, a congregation founded in 1776 that eventually gave its name to the surrounding community: Bethel Park. Like the one at Beulah, this cemetery is proud to be the permanent home to more than a dozen Revolutionary soldiers. It's also the final resting place of James Miller and several other newly independent Americans who produced fine local whiskey and eventually got involved in the Whiskey Rebellion. If you take a flask of rye with you to Miller's grave, pour him a shot.

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