Horace Pippin's last resting site hidden in plain view

Horace Pippin deserved better.

That's all librarian Christina McCawley and her husband Dwight could think of as they pushed away the branches.

The West Chester couple had gone in search of the gravesite of the self-taught artist whose work hangs on the walls of major museums.

On their second visit to Chestnut Grove Cemetery Annex in West Goshen, they found Pippin's resting place. It was buried, the couple said, beneath the branches of a tree-size bush that dwarfed McCawley and her husband.

"I've been collecting everything that's been written about him, said Christina McCawley, serials and acquisitions librarian at West Chester University. "Here was this famous, famous artist and his gravestone was totally not findable."

With that discovery, McCawley decided that maybe she could help bring Pippin's grave into plain sight.

It began several months earlier at a meeting on a children's book about Pippin at the Chester County Historical Society.

Artist James Fuhrman, of Glenmoore, was sitting in the audience.

Fuhrman and his wife Fern Denney, a docent at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, had earlier searched for Pippin's grave and also found it beneath the bush. Fuhrman rose to his feet at the meeting.

"I made a speech to see if somebody would do something about it," said Fuhrman, 70.

Christina McCawley was sitting in the audience and heard him. After the event, McCawley chatted with Fuhrman and said she'd help with any effort to clear the site.

Plunging-in is standard practice for the 73-year-old McCawley who just returned from a conference in Singapore, completed an online course on the history of rock and roll, and regularly travels to museum exhibits far and away.

"She's always googling things to find out about this that and the other," said Dwight McCawley, a retired English professor at West Chester University.

His wife was intrigued by Pippin, who died at 58.

The African-American artist was born in West Chester, but grew up in New York. He returned to West Chester to live after he served in World War I and was shot in his right shoulder. Pippin painted by using his left hand to hold up his weakened right arm.

In the 1930s, Pippin's stark depictions of everyday life garnered the attention of critics, collectors and fellow artists. His works are in the collections of Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation (where Pippin took classes), and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

"I love his stuff," said McCawley, who started looking for Pippin's grave a few months after the historical society meeting.

The cemetery, on Pottstown Pike, is an annex to the nearby Chestnut Grove Cemetery which was founded in 1862 to bury African American residents who were denied burial in other cemeteries.

The DeBaptiste Funeral Home, which has offices in West Chester, is the caretaker of the property.

The funeral home took over the cemetery from the Williams family. Thomas Williams and his wife Viola had earlier managed the cemetery, said their daughter Ola Roy, of Philadelphia.

"The Pippins lived next door to my grandparents," said Roy, 89. "[Horace Pippin] was a quiet man; tall and erect. I just remember him sitting in the back of his house, painting."

Clifford DeBaptiste, founder of the funeral home and former mayor of West Chester, said that he never had the chance to remove the tall bush near Pippin's grave. He maintains that it didn't entirely cover the site. But he agreed that the bush should come down.

DeBaptiste told McCawley that he'd do it soon. But McCawley knew it was "too big a job for just one."

So she called Mason's Tree Service in Downingtown. The first price estimate to remove it was $2,500. Too much, the McCawleys thought. But an hour later, after considering the couple's motivation, tree service owner Scott Mason called back and lowered the price by $1,000.

"I told my husband 'I'll find the money somewhere,'" said McCawley, who has a doctorate in library management.

She called DeBaptiste and he gave his okay. The bush came down.

As word spread of the McCawleys effort, letters of thanks came in, including one that contained a check for $100 from Roy and her sister. DeBaptiste called the couple's effort a "generous" move.

The towering branches of the decades-old bush now are gone, and the grave stone inscribed with "Horace Pippin, 1888-1946" is in full view.