This photo shows the South Hopedale School and Cemetery across the street from Rosenfeld’s Concrete. The school, built in 1855, was the third in the area. It has been the Lussier family residence since about 1935. Norman Lussier lived there until near the end of his life in 2011. It was razed in 2017.This picture is in the second printing of Images of America: Hopedale, (p. 121) but not the first. We wanted to use a story about how Memorial Day was observed at the school but we hadn’t seen this photo until after the book went to print. Since this went with the story much better than the picture that we used in the first printing, we convinced the publisher to make the change. We became aware of the photo through Roberta Simmons and obtained a copy from the original owned by Shirley Nixon.
A History of South Hopedale Vandalism at the Cemetery
When relating memories of his life, George Bushnell told this of his work at the cemetery:
After Drapers, I went to Data General for ten years as a tech writer on computer hardware. I retired from there in 1990. I worked at the Pine Grove Cemetery in Milford part time for a number of years after that. Robert Moore was in charge of the work there. After I gave that up, I was asked if I wanted to be in charge of maintenance at the South Hopedale Cemetery, so I did that until a few years ago. When I started, I had to use a push mower because there were so many stones and stumps. I got rid of them and then I could take my tractor and do ninety-five percent of the mowing with that. There were just chains at the entrance, so I built the gate.
