Local cemetery resting place for over 90 babies, to receive blessing – sungazette.com

“One of the things he asked me to do was take care of our family plot,” Mike said of his grandfather, Ken DiRocco Sr., who was diagnosed with cancer in 2019.

His grandfather also shared that he had a brother, who was stillborn in the 1920s, buried somewhere at Wildwood.

Ken didn’t know his brother’s name, but after inquiring at the office years ago, he found out his brother would have been buried in an unconsecrated section of the Mt. Carmel cemetery.

Mt. Carmel is a Catholic Cemetery, adjacent to Wildwood Cemetery and about 14 acres in size.

Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Williamsport. The Catholic cemetery, owned by St. Joseph the Worker Parish, borders Wildwood Cemetery and is maintained by the Wildwood staff. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette

It is owned by St. Joseph the Worker Parish, but maintained by Wildwood Cemetery, according to Caleb Hipple, Wildwood Cemetery assistant general manager.

The unconsecrated, or not blessed, part of the cemetery is where these unbaptized babies, born to Catholic families, many of them stillborn, were buried.

Mike called the Wildwood Cemetery office and asked them to give him a list of all the DiRoccos buried in the cemetery.

Mike credits Fred Erickson, Wildwood Cemetery general manager, for much of the success of his investigation.

“Fred has been extremely helpful in all this. He’s the reason I got all this information,” Mike said.

Two iron cross markers that were found at Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Williamsport. One is blank and one has the name Domenico Tofani engraved. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette

“It is really refreshing to see a member of the community be so involved with a project and for us to be a part of it,” Hipple said.

One of the names on that list was Mike’s grandfather’s deceased brother, Tony Dirocco, born March 22, 1922.

The burial record book contained Tony’s date, death, address, undertaker and cause of death, but in the column where a grave number should be, it said “unconsecrated ground,” Mike said.

No one in Mike’s family had known the name or the exact date of birth of Tony DiRocco.

“I went up. I wanted to see that hand-writing, you know from 100 years ago. I actually found it and it would have been right before his 100th birthday,” Mike said.

Mike eventually looked through the entire book and found over 90 babies and one adult who were buried in the unconsecrated part of the cemetery.

Finding that part of the cemetery came down to their best guess as to where the babies would have been buried, most likely in an underutilized part of the cemetery, Hipple said.

“Unfortunately, the record keeping wasn’t done in house. It was done at the church. So those records weren’t really kept in the same way ours were,” Hipple added.

Mike took photos of the pages, and went home and tried to match some of the family names on ancestry.com.

After a few more trips to see the burial record book at the Wildwood office, Mike eventually posted the list of babies to Facebook.

The names in the book, written in cursive 100 years ago, could be a challenge to decipher.

In addition to the writing, the old book of records for Mt. Carmel is not in good shape.

“We are actually working right now on repairing it; it’s falling apart,” Hipple said.

“The Facebook post helped me correct some of those names. I actually had a family give the baby a name. It was just ‘baby girl’ and they said that they remembered the mother wanted it named after her,” Mike said.

Other people have found relatives on the list they never knew about, he added.

The Facebook group and the families that have contacted Mike have been valuable to his research.

“There’s a lot of mystery in this, a lot of mystery, and every little thing people tell me helps to put a few more puzzle pieces together,” Mike said. “I like to dig into things and investigate things, that’s exciting. But after a while, it wasn’t really exciting, it was heartbreaking. On some of the notes on the death certificates, you can see, ‘the mother came in complaining of a headache, stillborn due to long labor’ and just reading those notes that somebody wrote at that time.”

Mike’s hope is that a memorial for the infants can be placed at the cemetery with the money being raised through possibly a GoFundMe account.

A few iron cross markers for the babies were found, one with a name, Domenico Tofani.

That cross was broken, so Mike repaired it. There was also a blank cross next to it.

“I think there ought to be a monument. Put their names permanently here, so they are recognized. It’s just a shame that they haven’t,” Mike said.

Wildwood Cemetery has offered to engrave the memorial for free, Mike said.

“I want other people to have a say in this, too. This isn’t just my thing. These are their family members, too,” Mike said.

The names of the babies will be read during a memorial Mass at 10 a.m. on Nov. 11 at St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Williamsport, followed by a blessing of the unconsecrated ground in Mt. Carmel Cemetery by The Reverend David W. Bechtel.

Mike’s hope is to have as many family members as possible come to the memorial Mass and the blessing at the cemetery.

“People want to come to the Mass, that’s important to me,” Mike said. “It’s great to see so many people getting involved.”

Throughout his four-year quest, Mike stresses this journey is not about him, but about the babies and their families.

“My mission here is to help people,” he added.

After waiting, in some cases over 100 years, they can be recognized and given peace, Rev. Bechtel said to Mike.

“I’ve thought about this for years, and finally my brother gets to go to heaven,” shared a sister of one of the infants.

Anyone wanting to contact Mike DiRocco can email him at [email protected].