Ron Pattinson has an unusual calling, he restores lost cemeteries. Cemetery Pattinson of the Oregon Township, was honored Tuesday night for single-handedly giving us back an important piece of Dane County's past. Joel DeSpain took us Off The Beaten Path for this unusual call to community service.
Some people are firemen.
Some people get on the village board. For nearly 100 years, people drove by, even lived next to, Lake Harriet cemetery without knowing it was ever here. An old timer, who's now passed on himself, once told Pattinson of a beautiful lost little country cemetery filled with pioneers that vanished from maps around the turn of the century. The second weekend out here, I found my first piece of stone. To grasp what he's rebuilt, all by himself, over seven years, with his own money, you must know that before this became a thicket it was home to farm animals.