The historic Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, New York is celebrating its 175-anniversary next week, but there’s more to the rural cemetery than its “gorgeous” rooms and towering tombstones. As reports, there’s a story behind the stones.
Heidi Klinowski will be buried in the historic cemetery with a plot picked near the chapel – so if there’s an afterlife, she’ll still know what’s going on, she says.
She joined the “Friends of Oakwood Cemetery,” a group of volunteers who promote and support the cemetery, in the late 1990’s. Now in her 80’s she walked the park with her family and friends as a kid and is the go-to “for all things history and tours for Oakwood.” Klinowski and I drove around the nearly 12 miles of existing roads and pathways to take in the sights, sounds, and beauty of the final resting place of more than 60,000 people.
She gave me the low-down on the history of some of the people who are buried here. She says she has generations of ancestors buried here – not all of whom she knew or knew was buried here until she joined the friends group. During our tour, we ran into another friend of the cemetery, Donna Guzy, who told us this:…