How Many People Does It Take To Raise An Obelisk In Waterford?

Brothers Paul Cushing of ProTek Auto in Niantic and Chris Cushing of Cush's Home Grown in Old Lyme have been building things together for as long as they can remember. As kids, they built tree houses. As adults, for fun they made floats for Niantic's Light Parade and even built a pirate ship for Celebrate East Lyme's raft race. 

But until Waterford Town Clerk and Municipal Historian Robert Nye asked them, neither brother had ever considered raising a one-ton granite obelisk.

"This is new in our repertoire," said Paul Cushing. 

Neglected History

Waterford resident Patrick Crotty, who lives next door to the historic Church/Williams Cemetery in Quaker Hill, first drew Nye's attention to the sorry state of the graveyard about a year ago. 

Nye was particularly concerned to hear that the obelisk on the monument to whaling ship captain Edwin Church—who died of yellow fever on the island of Brava in Cape Verde in 1868—had been lying on the ground since a tree felled by Hurricane Irene knocked it from its pedestal.

“There was some talk of getting the town to do it but they would have used a bucket loader,” said Nye. Given the small size of the graveyard and the historic graves clustered so close together, Nye said, it seemed a better idea to take a low tech approach. But when push came to shove, Nye said, “The town didn’t want to get involved."  

So Nye decided to approach Paul Cushing to see if he'd be up for a little graveyard restoration. And "they kind of got excited about it," Nye said. 

“I just figured Paul’s the kind of guy who likes challenges, and he rounded up his brother and a couple of engineers," said Nye. "It was more or less planned out." 

"We've been working as a team for forever," said Paul Cushing. "We did it the old-fashioned way—with engineering, manpower, prayers, and luck!"

"Yeah, when you see a ton of granite going in the air and you're using old rusty chain falls...." Chris Cushing adds with a laugh—although it wasn't quite so funny when one of the chain falls snapped with the obelisk halfway suspended. Still, it all worked out in the end.

They did the work on May 30 as a final celebration of National Historic Preservation Month.