Bob Sheets, President
Arbovale Cemetery Association
The Arbovale Cemetery Association invites members of the community and especially family and friends of loved ones who were laid to rest in the Arbovale Cemetery during the past year, to the annual Memorial Day Service Sunday, May 26, 2 p.m. at the Arbovale United Methodist Church.
Over the past years, it has been a tradition to honor those who were interred during the year by calling their name and presenting a flower in their honor to a family member or friend. We are requesting that family and friends of the deceased be present to designate a person to accept the flower and place it in a basket which will be taken to the cemetery following the service.
The Pocahontas County Honor Corps will complete the program with a flag ceremony at the main gate of the cemetery following the memorial service. They will also acknowledge approximately 400 veterans who are interred in the Arbovale Cemetery by placing a flag at the grave of each veteran.
This year’s speaker is David Rittenhouse, who grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In the 1950s, he spent a year in Germany with Brethren Services as a volunteer, and a year in Turkey with President Eisenhower’s “Escape Program” for men fleeing communism in the Balkans. After college and seminary, he and his wife, Laura Jean, moved to Durbin to pastor the Church of the Brethren in 1959. Apart from doing mission work in Ecuador for three years and pastoring a church in Puerto Rico for one year, they have spent their lives pastoring the Brethren Church and raising their family in Pocahontas County. During those years, he has held revivals in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. To pastor the church here, he taught school, farmed, and drove the school bus. In 2010 he retired, but he is still an active member of the ministry team of the Brethren at New Hope.
For more information about this service, contact Bob Sheets at 304-456-4815.
