WESTVILLE, Ill. (WAND)- For 110 years, the Westville Lithuanian Cemetery has recorded the community’s history in stone.
There’s the gravestone of 24-year-old Paul Ruskin who died in a mine April 5, 1920.
There’s the football-shaped marker of 17-year-old Leo Lucas who died in 1925.
The stone of John Banis, who died in 1936, warns: “The ungodly shall see it and shall grieve him. He shall gnash with his teeth and consume away; the desire of the wicked shall perish.”
A club of Lithuanian immigrants opened the cemetery in 1909, said longtime volunteer Robert Sandlin.
“We have one Italian. We don’t discriminate,” Sandlin laughed. “He married a Lithuanian, though.”
Through the years, volunteers have kept up the cemetery, Sandlin said, including Mike Laitas who cut the cemetery’s grass with a push mower.
More recently, workers have restored some stones.
“It was a pretty good-sized job on them big stones,” said Stan Jordan, who maintains the cemetery. “We got them out of the road, dug the old footings, put new footings in and set them back in.”
Now, the cemetery has gained international attention. It’s been featured on Global True Lithuania, an encyclopedia of Lithuanian heritage sites around the world. The site is compiled by researcher Augustinas Zemaitis through his project “Destination America, which is funded by the Lithuanian government.
“They were impressed with all the flags we had up,” said Jordan.
The cemetery holds a ceremony each Memorial Day that draws visitors from around Illinois and beyond, Sandlin said.
