Lifelong Nockamixon resident Howard Shive thought about retiring from his post on the Union Cemetery Company Board of Directors, but then reconsidered. He realized that if he remained on the board until 2006, he would bring to a close a full century during which a Shive family member had been responsible for the care of the burial ground.

His grandfather started the family involvement, by becoming a board member in 1906, owing mostly to his physical proximity to the place: his father’s farm lay adjacent to the ground. Two years later, he bought the farm that still sits alongside the cemetery on Church Hill Road. He donated a piece of ground from his farm to enlarge the original graveyard, which dated from the 1700s. That was the area currently bounded by Church Hill Road, Steeple Drive, the upper driveway, and the line where the old stone fence changes style (you can still see it today). He served on the board for thirty years.

His son, Webster, took over for the next thirty. Webster’s son, Kenny, took over in 1966. Ken was on his way to his own thirty years when his life was cut short by an auto accident in 1989. That’s when Howard took over. At one time or another, all the Shive men have served as caretaker, and Howard also served as board President for a time. Their duties as board members consisted of hiring caretakers and gravediggers, setting pay rates, and keeping the non-profit company’s finances in order.

Howard remembers that, when all the roads were still just dirt, the farmers had to pay attention to keeping the single side driveway free of horses, wagons and farm equipment so those who came to pay their respects could get in. In 1939, when the township first paved the roads, his grandfather again donated land, including the front driveway near which the new sign now stands. The drive got paved, along with the road. Tragically, his grandfather was hit by a car while walking home from a Christmas program at St. Luke’s church on December 17th that year. Ironically, his was the first funeral to use the newly paved drive.

The yard was expanded one more time when Webster donated the tract above the upper drive to accommodate a need for more plots. Originally, graves were sold in plots of eight, four-foot-by-eight-foot spaces, which were commonly bought by families who tended to stay around here. These 16-foot-square plots cost $50 each, and a family could guarantee perpetual care for another $50. The eight-member board could, at its discretion, set individual prices and payment terms for those families who couldn’t afford the entire bill at once. Some families opted out of the perpetual care contract, which led to a patchy, unkempt look for the whole yard.

Webster, then acting as caretaker, offered a simple solution. He explained that it was actually easier to just mow all the graves than to have to go around those without care contracts, so he proposed a single price that always included care. The new pricing structure also made up for the fact that many families were now scattered outside the township, and many people only needed single plots. Previously, single plots were only available in the poorer, “Potter’s Field” section. These days, single plots are the norm, and cost $300 each with full care included.

Howard says the trend seems to be toward cremation, because they’re selling and digging a lot fewer graves. “Back in 1941,” he says, “my dad dug 27 graves over the winter, and there were lots of piles of excess dirt waiting to fill trenches and potholes when the snow melted in the spring. This year, there was only one.”

He isn’t sure whether one of his sons will take his place when he retires, but feels that a century is a respectable period of time for a family to have served.