Roslyn's Wesley Craven has grave concerns

If you want an old-fashioned burial, Wesley Craven promises to be the last one to let you down.

In fact, that's exactly what his business card - one that shows the broad-shouldered 71-year-old Craven wielding a pick ax - says.

Craven is a gravedigger at the Cle Elum and Roslyn cemeteries, where those who want traditional burial go to their final resting place in graves that are still hand-dug.

Last Friday, Craven and a helper were busy getting the burial site ready for Joe Ozbolt, a former miner who died at the age of 86. Several days earlier, Craven and his assistant had been busy digging the grave. It meant pulling out rocks and moving 22 wheelbarrows of dirt to a brushy area at the side of the cemetery. A large mound of dirt sat beside the grave waiting to be put back once the coffin had been lowered.

On Friday, Craven, who moves with the ease of a much younger man, wrestled a roll of artificial grass to the ground, smoothing it out around the grave site. Then he grabbed the handles of a wheelbarrow full of large rocks and quickly pushed it to a dumping area.

Credit the blessing of good health for the fact he is still strong and mobile, he said.

"I can jump down off a truck," he said, grinning. "I don't have knee or hip problems. There are guys a lot younger who can't do that."

Born and raised in Roslyn, Craven is one of 13 children born to Sam and Ethel Craven. At 17, he left the Upper County for the West Side where he worked construction and spent some years as a Golden Gloves boxer.

Along the way, he won two Golden Glove championships - one in 1966, the second a year later. Inadvertently, he also managed to sideline the career of former professional heavyweight Boone Kirkman who suffered a collarbone injury while sparring with Craven. Decades later, the two men remain friends.

He got his start as a boxer in the Upper County. At "8 or 9" he was fighting his brother Sam at "smokers" at the Cle Elum Eagles club.

"I don't remember that we ever got anything out of it," he said.

Now, watching Craven flash a broad but mostly toothless grin, it's hard to imagine him stalking an opponent around the ring. He seems more like a strong but gentle teddy bear than a boxer.

In fact, "Bear" is what his wife, Velma, sometimes calls him.

"When he's disgusted he makes a sound like a bear growling," she said. "He's just a kind, wonderful man who makes friends easily and doesn't let anything bother him. He's an easygoing guy who doesn't drink or smoke, takes good care of himself and loves life. He told me, 'I'm richer than a lot of people because I have my health.'"

After several decades working on the West Side, Craven came home to Roslyn, a place his heart never really left.

In 1995, he started working as a gravedigger.

Consider it following in some pretty big family footsteps. His father, the late Sam Craven, who came to Roslyn in 1922 and worked in the mines until the last one closed in the 1960s, was a gravedigger, first at the Black Cemetery in Roslyn, later at both the Roslyn and Cle Elum cemeteries. "He dug graves until he died," Craven said. After that, Craven's brother Will dug graves until the mid-1980s.

"Everybody tells me, 'You're not as strong as your Dad was' or 'You don't work as hard as your dad.' I tell them, 'I'm not my dad. I'm Wesley," he said with a good-natured grin.

His father and the undertaker would pause after burying someone they knew and have a drink, Craven said.

"They'd say they were going to 'drink them up,'" Craven said. "I don't say that. I say, 'I'm covering you up and I hope you have a good time - wherever you're going."

Toni Fields, Cle Elum city clerk and sexton for the city cemetery, calls Craven "just a really good guy who does a good job and takes the job personally."

He always has a joke when he stops by City Hall and, on special occasions, he comes bearing a rose for each of the women who work there.

"He calls us 'sweethearts,'" Fields says. "He just has a heart of gold. If you need help, Wesley would be the first person there to help you."

Craven doesn't know how many graves he's hand dug over the years. Some were for strangers, others for people he knew, like Ozbolt.

That keeps the work personal.

"He was born in 1922. I was born in 1937," he said. "He knew me. After I came back here, I bought a gold mine. He had a gold mine, too."

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small container of ore. He was going to ask to have it buried with Ozbolt, he said.

"I think he would like that," Craven said.

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Information from: Daily Record, http://www.kvnews.com

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