Man's mission ends

The huge, white cross embedded for more than 30 years in an east Santa Rosa hillside has begun to fade away now that the landowner has told the 94-year-old creator of the simultaneously cherished and detested landmark: Enough.

Taking care of the cross, consisting of thousands of whitewashed rocks, since 1981 has been the personal mission of Arvo Kannisto, a wiry and ardent Christian, war veteran and retired San Francisco police lieutenant.

Kannisto kept a promise to himself to honor his faith and his fellow World War II combatants who lie beneath crosses throughout Europe. But he failed to honor his vow to the owner of the hillside behind the St. Francis Acres and Skyhawk residential developments east of Calistoga Road and north of Sonoma Highway.

Their agreement specified that only Kannisto was permitted to go onto the land to maintain the cross. But frequently over the years, Kannisto allowed others onto the hillside.

Some wanted to see the cross close up. Others volunteered to help Kannisto spray Roundup on weeds and grass growing within or near the rocks, to whitewash the rocks or to replace ones rolled down the hill by kids or detractors of the landmark.

Beyond his concern about the liability risks heightened by the trespassing, landowner Carl Merner has become increasingly concerned that at 94, Kannisto places himself in danger when he ascends the hill to work on the cross.

So after 31 years, Merner has terminated the agreement and told Kannisto he must stay off the land.

"It breaks my heart, you know," said Kannisto, who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army and after the war served 31 years as a policeman in his hometown of San Francisco.

"You can tell by looking up there that the weeds are starting to grow," he said. "It's sad."

Kannisto's heartache at being banned from the hillside has been softened by a surprise development in his life.

Just two weeks ago, he exchanged marriage vows with Patricia "Terri" Freeland, a widow several decades younger than he. She'd sought him out to thank him for building and maintaining the cross, and they clicked.

"We know it was the Lord's work because we weren't looking for anybody," she said.

Her pugnacious and remarkably agile groom lights up as he refers to her as "my wife." But his demeanor dims when the conversation turns to the cross and the strong likelihood that he never again will hike up to tend to encroaching weeds and grass and displaced stones.

Merner said the 31-year labor of love, by necessity, must now draw to a close.

Merner was away from Santa Rosa in 1981 when a brother, who later died, granted Kannisto's request to create something special on the hillside. Four years earlier, Kannisto had left the San Francisco Police Department and he and his late wife, Inez, retired to a home at the base of the slope.

Merner's brother granted Kannisto's request to create a great cross to honor both Jesus Christ and the soldiers who died fighting Hitler. Kannisto was 63 when he began cutting a shape 127 feet high and 67 feet wide into a grassy clearing on the southerly face of the hill.

Then he hauled onto the shape about 3,000 stones -- some weighing more than 100 pounds. In 1998, he made the cross more visible by coating the rocks with whitewash.

Since the beginning, Kannisto has known he was not to expose Merner to liability by taking others onto the hillside. But he has many times allowed people to visit the cross, and he has accepted offers of help to spray the grass and weeds and to replace and repaint stones.

"We had an agreement," Merner said Wednesday. Permission to come onto the property "was extended to him and him alone."

Merner said despite multiple warnings, it continued to happen that other people were seen working on the cross.

Now that Merner has terminated the agreement and prohibited Kannisto from entering the property, the landowner anticipates that, in time, the parcel beneath the cross "will go back to what it was."

Without upkeep by Kannisto and his helpers, grass and weeds will grow to obscure the rocks, the pathway up the hill will be covered, the whitewash will fade and displaced rocks will not be carried back into place.

The slow erosion will please people who long have resented it as a religious symbol forced upon them or a blight upon a classic Sonoma County hillside.

Friends and foes of the cross live side by side on the Skyhawk development's Owls Nest Drive. The street is cut into the top of a hillside facing the cross, so its residents are exposed to an elevated, close-up and unobstructed view.

"It's part of Rincon Valley," Michael Madsen said from the Owls Nest Drive home he shares with his wife and two daughters.

He said he'll be riding his bike in Annadel State Park and will enjoy gazing across the valley to the landmark near his house.

"We refer to it often," said his wife, Kelly.

Some of their neighbors said they also like having the great, white "t" as a geographical point of reference.

But other neighbors are eager to see the hillside revert to its natural state.

Nathan Patrick said he might not dislike the cross so much were it an object that represents the entire community -- sort of like the "Hollywood" sign. But the cross "is not something that was decided upon by the community," he said, "it was decided upon by one man."

Patrick said it feels appropriate to him for the cross to fade into the earth and into the past now that its elderly creator can no longer maintain it.

Such an end to Kannisto's cross, he said, "mirrors the evolution of one man's life."

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