close

Local students to repair gravesites

By Janice Maruniak For The 4 min read

Two former and other current Uniontown High School Bible Club members will be hard at work during their summer break from school Friday afternoon at Oak Grove Cemetery on Route 21 in Uniontown. Zack Wilson and Steve Lint, both undergraduate students at West Virginia University, will be leading the group of Bible Club members in a project to pour new cement bases under the headstones of two firemen who died in the line of duty.

According to the Rev. Peter Malik, director of Teens for Christ, the tombstones of Voight LaClair and Fire Chief Lewis Williams and their families have sunk into the ground.

“The students are going to remove the stones and pour new cement bases,” Malik said.

Cemetery caretaker Wes Williams will be overseeing the project. Williams is the great-great-great nephew of Lewis Williams, one of only two firefighters who have died fighting fires in the city. Williams died Oct. 9, 1901, from a heart attack. It was believed that exhaustion after fighting three fires in the same day contributed to his death.

On that day in 1901, Williams fought fires at a blacksmith shop, now White Swan’s apartments on West Main Street, in the kitchen of a private home on East Main where the public service building now stands and at stables on South Morgantown Street or Morgantown Hill.

It was after the last fire when Williams was walking back home with two other firefighters to get dry clothes when he collapsed into the arms of one of the firemen with him and died.

LaClair was killed on March 23, 1914, after he fell through the roof of the McClelland home and 5-and-dime store on Main Street, Uniontown. He was cutting a hole in the roof to allow water to get to the fire.

Wilson and Lint, who graduated two years ago from Uniontown High School, have remained active with the Bible Club.

“We have stuck with the club because we want to help with the remembrance of the firemen,” Wilson said. “We are doing what we can to give the respect and commemoration deserved to these firemen.”

Malik said the Uniontown High School Bible Club will be donating the materials for the project. Cement will be poured under LaClair’s headstone, along with the headstones of LaClair’s mother and father first. Wilson noted the work should be done in one day. The cement under William’s headstone also will be redone in the near future, according to Malik.

Meanwhile, this morning before arriving at the cemetery, the students will be canvassing downtown Uniontown businesses handing out “Buy a Brick” fliers.

Malik, one of the coordinators of the Uniontown Fireman’s Memorial project that is nearing completion at the corner of South Mount Vernon Avenue and Pittsburgh Street, said the students have started a brick selling campaign to help pay for a walkway leading up to the monument and other memorial expenses. The monument displays a 6-foot-tall granite statue of a fireman kneeling in prayer atop a base 6 feet wide, 6 feet long and 6 feet high.

“The bricks will cost $50 each,” Malik said. “They can be bought in memory of, in honor of, or given by someone.”

Students of the Bible Club, who partnered with the Uniontown Fire Department to help establish the monument, have set a goal of raising $1,225 by Christmas through the campaign. Malik said the club will make a 50 percent profit off each brick that will be earmarked to help pay for the walkway and other memorial expenses.

Information on buying a brick can be obtained by calling Teens for Christ at 724-439-1011.

“We hope adults will take a look at all the work the students have been doing and help to support them by buying a brick,” Malik said.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $4.79/week.

Subscribe Today