second act
Grave Work Helps Families Honor Their Loved Ones By Margaret McCormick
T
im O’Boyle has always felt drawn to cemeteries. He and his wife, Linda, have trekked to Arlington National Cemetery to visit The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and admire the thousands of meticulous white marble stones honoring America’s war dead. While in New York City, they went to see Hamilton — not the Broadway musical, but the spot where Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of our country, was laid to rest in Trinity Church Cemetery. In Paris, their tombstone tourist agenda included Pere Lachaise cemetery, the final resting place of opera singer Maria Callas, writer Oscar 50
Wilde, pianist and composer Frederic Chopin, and singer, songwriter and vocalist Jim Morrison of The Doors. These days, O’Boyle is spending a good amount of time in Central New York cemeteries. The Syracuse resident, who will turn 55 this fall, is the founder of With All Respect Due LLC, a gravesite maintenance company. His services include cleaning family mausoleums, headstones and ground-level markers, straightening headstones that have shifted in the earth and general site maintenance and beautification, like grass trimming and flower and plant installation and care. Rules and regulations for such
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services vary from cemetery to cemetery and O’Boyle operates within the guidelines of each one. He’s not buried in work, but the job is keeping him busy, so far. “I want to help people honor their families,’’ O’Boyle said of his service. “These sites are the final resting place of someone who means something to you.’’ O’Boyle’s job is seasonal, roughly April to late October, depending on the weather. It’s his semi-retirement occupation and he comes to it after a long career in the tech world. He supported sales of computer systems for a local company as their technical solutions architect and when that