Sonoma Stories: Bodega marks 150 years of its cemetery on the hill

The pastoral town of Bodega is a sweet place not only to visit or live or work, but to lie in eternal rest.

In 1869, the first burial took place in a hillside cemetery that rises above rural Bodega Highway just west of the town. That interment mourned the death of a 7-year-old boy named Thomas Johnson.

Since then, members of the Bodega area’s pioneering and leading families have been buried at Calvary Catholic Cemetery - Albinis, Colombos, Fitzpatricks, Franceschis, Furlongs, Gleasons, Gonnellas, O’Farrells, Pozzis, Stumps and others.

The O’Farrells include the Irish immigrant who once was the richest man in Sonoma County. Jasper O’Farrell, who worked as the first land surveyor for San Francisco before Sonoma County voters elected him to the state Senate, died in 1875. The graveyard in which he lies sometimes is called St. Teresa’s Cemetery because of its connection to the town’s classic Catholic church, St. Teresa of Avila, made famous around the world by its cameo in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, “The Birds.”

“It’s the only active Catholic cemetery in the west county,” said 84-year-old parishioner Art Hansen, who works virtually all the time maintaining and improving it as its volunteer manager.

“I think it’s a beautiful cemetery,” he said. “I think it’s very unusual.”

On Tuesday, Hansen and other members of St. Teresa and its sister church, St. Philip the Apostle of Occidental, will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the cemetery.

Parish priest Fergal McGuinness will hold an 11 a.m. Mass at the cemetery. The public is invited.

A century and a half after young Thomas Johnson was laid to rest, burials still occur at the 2-acre graveyard. And some of its most moving headstones honor children.

Nicholas Green is buried there. The well-read, imaginative and theatrical Bodega Bay boy was 7 years old and traveling in Italy with his parents and younger sister when highway bandits fired a gunshot that struck him in the head.

That was in 1994. Nicholas’ folks, Reg and Maggie Green, touched hearts and changed attitudes about organ donation throughout Italy and far beyond when they asked that their son’s organs be transplanted to ailing Italians.

Not far from Nicholas’ headstone is that of sisters Kaitlyn and Hailey Markus.

Six-year-old Kaitlyn and Hailey, 4, died in August 2016 when their family’s pickup slid off Highway 1 in Jenner and into the Russian River.

Unpaid cemetery volunteer Hansen honors the children and all the others buried there, and all who visit it, by maintaining the grounds and building concrete walkways.

“It’s a full-time job, but I enjoy it,” he said. “I have a grandson who helps me out a lot.”

Hanson said that working and lugging tools and materials up and down the historic cemetery’s sharply inclined terrain “is what keeps me young.”

He finds another benefit to working hour after hour in a cemetery: “Nobody argues with you.”

Hansen, who owns a burial lot there on the hill, speaks proudly of one of his projects and encourages people to drive by and see it - after dark.

“Pretty soon,” he said, “every grave will have a solar light. They’re like candles up there.”

You can reach Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.