Jack Bell has deep Hamilton roots.
A Hamilton High West graduate and one-time Hamilton Councilman, he has also been a varsity soccer coach at all three Hamilton public high schools. He has athletic accolades and enough varsity letters to cover three jackets. He is well known in his hometown.
What people may not know is that every December for the last 18 years, he has been doing some quieter, heartwarming work. He lays wreaths on the bronze and granite markers of veterans interred at the Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veterans Memorial Cemetery on Provinceline Road in Wrightstown, for the holidays.
Advent and Christmas wreaths can be made of evergreens to represent everlasting life and can symbolize a higher being with the circular shape having no beginning and no end. Wreaths date back to ancient Greece and Rome and may have symbolized a person or families, social status or occupation.
In December 2004, Bell lost a close friend in Vietnam veteran Robert J. Goleniecki. His friend was buried in the veterans’ cemetery in Wrightstown.
When Bell and his wife Cathy went to put a wreath on Goleniecki’s grave, they noticed that very few graves had holiday wreaths on them. They thought that was sad, and wished to remedy it.
They promptly went out and purchased 10 more wreaths and placed them on markers around their friend’s marker.
BG William C. Doyle Veterans Memorial Cemetery covers 225 acres and resembles a well maintained park. It is a beautiful space that currently has 4,400 veterans and dependents interred, and total capacity for 171,000. The winding roads that lead to the cemetery are slow and peaceful to travel on.
The cemetery is run like clockwork by the military, and hosts more than a dozen burials on its hallowed grounds every business day. Thousands pay respects to those buried there ever year.
The cemetery was dedicated in 1986 by then Gov. Thomas J. Kean. In 1989, the cemetery was named for the principal behind its development U.S. Army Brigadier General William C. Doyle. The cemetery is managed by the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
It is open for burials to eligible New Jersey Veterans and their dependents. All military veterans are offered burial at no cost including the flush to the ground bronze and granite markers.
Bell, 75, said his father Marvin Bell, was in the Navy and took part in the D-Day invasion. “Bobby Goleniecki fought in Vietnam. We wanted to do something to honor these veterans. I played ball with Bobby. I wanted to honor him,” Bell said.
Bell himself is a veteran of the Air National Guard, serving from 1970 through 1976. Bell graduated from Trenton State College, now The College of New Jersey, and taught in the Hamilton School system to 37 years. He coached soccer at all three Hamilton public schools and won state titles with the boys’ varsity soccer teams from each of them.
Bell now lives in The Villages, near Ocala, Florida. He comes up at the holidays and resides in Columbus during his time back home.
While his dad worked at Roebling Steel, Bell’s mother was a secretary at the Reynolds Junior High School in Hamilton. Jack was a terrific high school athlete, excelling at soccer, basketball and baseball. He was a 1000 point scorer at both Hamilton West and also for Trenton State College later on.
Each year since 2004, Bell visited the veteran’s cemetery and brought a few more wreaths each time. While working a post-retirement job at Saul’s Funeral Home, and during subsequent work related trips to the cemetery, Bell noticed that many people did not pick up the wreaths that they decorated their loved ones graves with after the New Year.
The wreaths were thrown in the trash and discarded. Bell and his wife Cathy recycled these artificial wreaths and spruced them up for the following season.
“It seemed like such a shame as these wreaths were in good shape and could decorate someone else’s grave the next year,” Bell said.
When seeing Bell loading all the wreaths into his car a few years in, his neighbor, Joe Santasuosso volunteered to help. Bell’s wife of 44 years, Cathy, who died in 2015, was a big help with the wreath project, and would be sorely missed.
Some of the current helpers are Bell’s partner Bonnie Gaspari, daughter and granddaughter Kristen and Alyssa Palagano, grandson Anthony Palagano, Santasuosso, Rich Linneman, Neil Bencivengo and 20 others. They installed almost 200 wreaths this season.
Through some of the helpers, a Boy Scout troop has become involved also. Some of the Troop 24 based in Beverly help transport the wreaths and honor the veterans with a playing of Taps.
“The wreaths are not fancy. They are different sizes and used again, but we dress them up. They look nice. It shows we are thinking of the people buried here,” Bell said.
Bell and his team will come back and pick up the wreaths after the New Year and store them away until the next holiday season.
This year the group met at 9:30 on the morning of Dec. 17 to install the wreaths. There are about a dozen wreaths that are placed by request on graves of loved ones, of friends of Bell’s.
Wreaths are laid on the ground near the grave markers and secured with a hook. “We are all over the cemetery with the wreaths. It is not a small place, and it is a challenge to find the graves of those requested. The first one we place is Bobby Goleniecki, then the requests and then mostly in the area surrounding Bobby,” Bell said.
Families can locate where loved ones are buried by the cemetery website or at the information center on the grounds.
Bell stores the wreaths in his attic. “When I started this 18 years ago, I was younger and stronger. I think we are about at our limit now. Two hundred is about all I can handle,” he said.
One of the mottos in the veteran cemetery is attributed to President Abraham Lincoln: “Any nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.”
Jack Bell and his band of volunteers are doing just that: honoring our heroes.
“It was sad to see so many graves with no one thinking about the veterans. I wanted to do something to honor them, to honor my father, my friend Bobby and all of them. Honor all the veterans at holiday time,” Bell said.
Jack Bell (center) with grandson Anthony Palagano and daughter Kristen Bell Palagano.,
