Arvo Kannisto, keeper of Santa Rosa’s hillside cross, dies at 97

Arvo Kannisto, creator and keeper of the hillside cross of whitewashed stones that’s been adored and reviled in east Santa Rosa for nearly 35 years, died Wednesday. He was 97.

A Christian and a World War II combat veteran, Kannisto created the great cross - 127 feet tall, 67 feet across - in tribute to Jesus Christ and to his fellow GIs who did not come home.

“It’s a sign of faith, hope and love,” the often endearing, often pugnacious native of San Francisco told The Press Democrat in 2001.

Kannisto’s cross is set into a steep, grassy and wooded hillside above his longtime home and the St. Francis Acres and Skyhawk neighborhoods, located just north of Sonoma Highway and east of Calistoga Road. Visible for miles, the cross is regarded neutrally by many as a landmark that they’ve simply come to accept as part of the scenery.

Many others view it from diametrically opposed perspectives and either want it maintained forever or dismantled yesterday.

Among proponents of the cross, some say they like it because they are Christians and are comforted by it. Others have praised it as a symbol of Kannisto’s devotion to his faith and to fallen soldiers, or as an attractive and nearly historic point of reference in that part of Sonoma County.

Detractors include Christians who object that it is a scar on an open hillside or that the cross, even though sacred to them personally, should not be imposed so unavoidably on others. Among non-Christian critics, some say they’re especially offended by the image of a cross but would regard any such symbol, secular or not, as an eyesore.

It was 1981 when Kannisto asked the landowner’s permission to create the cross, which looms about 700 feet above the valley floor. He would recall that his inspiration came from flying into Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s and eying the nearly 100-foot-tall “Christ the Redeemer” statue that towers over the Brazilian city.

“There was Christ, standing in the clouds,” Kannisto said in his 2001 interview with The Press Democrat. “You couldn’t see the hill beneath him.”

After serving with the Army and attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel, Kannisto joined the San Francisco Police Department. He worked there for 31 years and retired in 1977 as a lieutenant.

He and his late first wife, Inez, had lived for several years in their retirement home at the foot of the east Santa Rosa hill when he received the landowner’s permission to create a cross in a large clearing.

It was a Herculean undertaking. Kannisto, a lean and highly motivated former mountain climber, gathered stones, some weighing about 100 pounds, and placed them in the precisely etched shape of a cross about 25 feet high.

When it was completed, he hiked back down, looked at it from several vantage points and decided it was far too small. He went back to work, hauling up tons of more rocks and enlarging the cross to its current size.

Later, a friend suggested that the cross would be more visible if the rocks were bright white. Kannisto trudged up and whitewashed what he said are 3,000 stones.

Typically just before Easter, he would ascend to the cross and spray the layered rocks with Roundup to keep down the weeds. When he deemed it necessary, he would apply fresh paint.

Repeatedly, people would climb up to the cross to pluck stones, sometimes many dozens of them, and roll them down the slope. Kannisto lamented in 2001, “For 20 years, they’ve been trying to destroy this cross.”

Whenever the vandalism happened, Kannisto would hike up and spend hours replacing the stones. Sometimes he’d have friends, church members or Boy Scouts help him.

But to have others accompany him onto the property violated the agreement he had with the landowner. Keen to avoid injuries or excessive trampling of the hillside, owner Carl Merner had insisted that no one but Kannisto go onto the property.

Kannisto had taken up many companions and helpers when Mercer notified him in 2012 that he no longer was permitted to go onto the land.

“We had an agreement,” Merner said at the time. Permission to come onto the property “was extended to him and him alone.”

Though he’d brought it upon himself by not honoring the agreement, Kannisto was crushed to be forbidden to continue maintaining his cross.

“It broke his heart to have that taken away from him,” said Patricia “Terri” Kannisto, his wife since 2012.

From time to time over the past four years, the future of the cross has ignited as an issue in the neighborhood. Several times, people have trespassed to roll away stones; several times, people have trespassed to carry them back into place.

In 2014, Cameron Whiteside, a student at nearby Maria Carrillo High School, circulated petitions aimed at persuading Merner to allow people to go onto the property to maintain the cross. Merner held to his position that it was time to stop trampling the hillside and to leave the cross to the workings of nature.

At present, the cross is fairly intact except for the clear evidence that stones have been plucked from the left side of the crossbar.

Kannisto enjoyed the title, keeper of the cross. Viewing his handiwork as a symbol of hope in a troubled world, he once said he wished he were wealthy and could buy the hillside and make certain the cross would remain in perpetuity.

Proud of his military service as well as his faith, Kannisto in November appeared for the first time in the Veterans Day Parade in Petaluma. His name and rank were emblazoned on signs on friend Mike Brown’s convertible as it rolled along the downtown route.

“I have never before heard such sustained applause from the very start of the parade to the end,” Brown said. He said Kannisto beamed.

The retired policeman, a member of the Evangel Assembly of God church in Healdsburg, was in hospice care at home for the last few days of his life.

“He faded away this morning,” Terri Kannisto said Wednesday. “It was beautiful. I was reading from the Bible.”

In addition to his wife, Arvo Kannisto is survived by his children, David, Rick and Kathy, all residents of Nevada, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A funeral service is being planned for the spring.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.