Get Marty: Monument Company Offers Free Repair To Beaver Co. Cemetery In Need
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NEW BRIGHTON (KDKA) -- When a large headstone got knocked over, a Beaver County cemetery didn't have the people, equipment or money to fix it and needed some help.
The memorial for a man named Yee -- a highly regarded doctor buried in Beaver County's Grove Cemetery in 1979 -- was found knocked over Monday night.
The folks at Grove Cemetery reached out to "Get Marty" to ask for help. In an email, they wrote, "Grove is made up of volunteers. We don't have the equipment to fix this."
Rome Monument does have the necessary equipment. They brought in a big crane to repair the 3,500-pound headstone.
It was icy, muddy and slick because it had been raining all day.
"It's pretty hard work," Bill Morgan, with Rome, said. "It's tough in these conditions."
The process wasn't easy. The crew had to lift the stone, reset the memorial and put the stone back in place.
Although the incident was first reported as vandalism, the cause was likely weather.
"It's hard to tell if this one was vandalized. So many are falling over in different areas," Morgan said. "On the hillside, sometimes frozen ice and snow get under the monument and push it over."
Rome Monument has done this before -- fixed monuments toppled by weather and vandals.
"Cars going down through a cemetery and knocking headstones over, we're there to put them back up," Morgan said.
The job normally costs $500, but Rome Monument fixed Yee's monument for free. The job took about an hour, and they also leveled out the area where the memorial was originally set.