By Charly SHELTON

It’s the season of ghosts and spooks and, while most Halloween events go the creepy, scary route, one group in Tujunga chose a more dignified way to bring long-dead residents back to the land of the living. On Saturday, the Little Landers Historical Society of Sunland-Tujunga hosted the Verdugo Hills Cemetery Tour, welcoming guests onto the normally closed-to-the-public burial grounds. Positioned throughout the cemetery were six pairs of actors, each with a vignette skit to bring to life the people and stories of those buried on the site.

“We got the scripts back in August, I think,” said Sabrina Walentynowicz who portrayed Rowena, a young socialite on the eve of the Garden of the Moon Festival in Tujunga, circa 1920s. “They got all the volunteers together at the end of September and then we had one rehearsal in October, so I guess [we’ve been with the project for] two months.”

The vignettes depict residents of the town from various eras who are buried in Verdugo Hills Cemetery and are embroiled in various discussions. For example, Daisy Bell Reinhart, the first female postal carrier in Los Angeles, who was transporting the very enamored Alvah Roebuck, of Sears-Roebuck Department Store, up to Tujunga to settle down and work the land. Or City Council President Frederick Ashbury and local banker JD Scoville, shown arguing over the decision to pave the city streets or leaving them dirt.

Due to many years of disarray and mismanagement of the cemetery, many of the graves are unknown and unmarked, so the placement of the staging was general for all performances except for that of Parson James Wornum and “Aunt” Jenny Wornum, who are resting prominently at the top of Pioneer Hill. They were the first to be buried in the cemetery in 1922. Their wooden grave marker was still intact as of 2008 when it was relocated to Bolton Hall for preservation and replaced with a granite marker.

The turnout on Saturday for each of the five shows was nearly full, with smaller groups taken from location to location as they cycled through each vignette.

“I think the fun thing is to see how many people are still interested and come out to the presentations because we are interested about the roots that started this community and all the hard work that went into it,” said Denise Western, who played Lida May, the counterpart and cousin to Rowena.

Walentynowicz added, “It’s a different kind of event because it really takes you back to when these country roads were way up in the mountains, more cut off from the rest of LA. The town started as a small, old west kind of town and, by showing it through [the vignette performances], you get to see it [the way] the residents saw it then.”

  Charly Shelton