Have you met Matt Cumberledge?
By C.R. Nelson
Talking to Matt Cumberledge is a time machine rendezvous with his personal past, where ancestors pop into the conversation as naturally as a smile.
We’re standing in the parking lot of Pine Bank United Methodist Church, tucked against the hillside above Toms Run in Gilmore Township.
“I’m related to most of the families here,” he tells me, cheerfully pointing to a row of stones filling the cemetery in front of the church. “Those are Carpenters. Over there,” he leads my gaze to the far tree line, “that’s the Cumberledge plot. That’s where my great uncle Charles is buried. He was killed in World War II. I brought lots of his stuff. I even have his wallet – it was on him when he died. Yeah, I’ll be buried there too.”
The kid from Brave who grew up loving history because he kept finding his family name on gravestones is now the executive director of Greene County Historical Society Museum.
The job that suits him to a T.
This phrase dates back to the late 1600s when the tittle – a mark such as an accent or the dot over an i – indicated the finishing detail of a word.
Every finishing detail of this new director puts the T of local history into the equation – today he’s wearing a Civil War vest -he’s been a reenactor, and he has a relative – Daniel Cumberledge – who fought in that war.
The Cumberledges trace their roots to Amon Barber Cumberledge, who married Rachel Stiles, granddaughter of Andrew Dye and Sarah Minor. Andrew Dye was the first to come to the rescue of John Corbley after the Corbley massacre, May 10, 1782, and Sarah was the sister of John Minor, considered to be the father of Greene County. Matt’s military buzz cut lets you know he was in the Army National Guard for two tours of duty in Iraq and still carries the soldier’s stamp. Six years as a state corrections officer was his last tour of duty, he tells me. Something in him said it was time to leave the battlefield behind. “I quit, and the next week I saw the ad for museum director. This is my dream job.”
The artifacts Matt brings his of great uncle Charles – the flag, the framed photos, the wallet – show his appreciation for those throwaway bits of the past that make history come alive. “Not many of us Cumberledges left Greene County,” he tells me, grinning.
But when they did, it was usually for military duty, and if they were lucky, they made it home to live another day. Matt’s father, James, made it back from the Korean War, raised a family and is buried over there.
Matt has brought two new flags for the grave, but they’re not needed – aunt Sandy Cole seems to have beaten him to it. We set up the artifacts for the photograph I’m about to take for this story, look inside the wallet at the faded social security card, the driver’s license, and the photos of the girlfriend that Private Charles F Cumberledge 1925-1944 would never come home to marry. Time seems to stand still – the smiling face of the lost girlfriend with the 1940s hair, the familiar contours of the face of the boy in uniform in the oval frame.
“We do look a lot alike,” Matt agrees. “His nickname was Whitey because he was so fair – like me.”
The copy of the newspaper article that Matt hands me has the kind of gritty detail that is so many times lost to history.
The letter that grandparents “Mr. and Mrs. Charles W Cumberledge, R.D. #1 Pine Bank” received from Corporal Lowell F. Devoe of Lincoln Nebraska, dated January 30, 1945, is an eyewitness account of the chaos and capriciousness of battle.
“War is not a very pleasant thing. …Please remember that if you are going to read this letter.”
Cumberledge and Defoe were hip-deep in the same foxhole on October 11, 1944. Their company was holding the line in a pear orchard by a “big stone farm building” near the highway to Aachen, Germany.
Devoe writes he was about to become second in command when Pvt. Cumberledge came in as a replacement. “I don’t know the date – time means nothing at the front.” The village of Elmendorf had been taken, and in a few days, companies would begin advancing towards Aachen under increasing German fire. “Whitey was such a big fellow he was assigned to carry the Browning automatic rifle.” The 19-year-old kid from Brave would use that Browning to defend a bridge, opening fire on the first German soldiers who approached. “We both had some pretty close calls.” After taking over 100 prisoners, two companies “snuck in” and occupied the woods behind German lines until heavy fire drove them down to the old farm and its pear orchard.
“The fellow who was with Whitey was scared so I changed places with him.”
The next morning on the far edges of the orchard, “canned breakfast rations were brought around and also the mail.” As Cumberledge began reading his bundle of letters, “one of our tank destroyers pulled up behind our foxhole.” Some of those letters were from “a girl named Jeanne Moore, he spoke well of her.” Another was from his grandmother, “and before he even began reading it he told me what a good cook she was.” It was at that moment that a German tank spotted the destroyer and began firing. “A white chemical shell hit right close to our hole setting our clothes on fire. We beat out the flames” as the destroyer scrambled, and shells rained down. “All of a sudden a shell hit a pear tree just above our head. I was sort of stunned by the explosion.” Blood running down the side of his head, Devoe reached over and shook Cumberledge to tell him he’d been hit, but there was no response. “I looked at him close. He hadn’t even known what hit for it had been all over for him in a second.”
It will soon be Memorial Day, and new flags are fluttering. We look down the stone-studded slope as an SUV pulls up, and people get out- a couple of girls moving ahead of a couple of adults. More family visitors, we reckon. I have my photo, but it’s hard to leave this sunny spring moment, hard to say goodbye to Charles, hard to gather up the artifacts, and turn the page on this chance connection with history. So we linger and talk about Matt’s plans for the future of the museum, going into uncertain times.
We’re here a week before this part of Pennsylvania goes from code red to yellow and opening day for the museum is still up in the air. With yellow, “We’re classified as entertainment, so we’re still shut down.” So alternate plans were hatched early on and virtual tours are now a weekly attraction with Matt as the online docent. Tours of the newly refurbished rooms and freshly arranged exhibits are receiving enthusiastic thumbs up from the museum’s growing number of Facebook fans and donations are coming in. Matt and his restless band of volunteers are itching to get back to preserving and repairing the museum’s unique collection of artifacts, like Waynesburg and Washington Rail Road Engine number 4, and its original passenger car rescued from a logging site in Georgia. By sometime in June, we will learn that Greene County is finally coded green, and museums will be open. But today we stand beside Charles Cumberledge, thinking of Memorial Day under code red and feeling something of the unknowing that Charles must have felt in that pear orchard.
As the group continues to wander through the cemetery, staring at stones and consulting pieces of paper, we finally holler to them, “Who are you looking for?” “We’re looking for Charles Cumberledge! We can’t find him anywhere!”
Matt and I look at each other, we laugh in disbelief.
The scavenger hunt West Greene 7th grade history teacher Zack Patton set up to get his students out of the house looking for local history for extra points has, amazingly enough, found us too.
“He’s here!” we yell.
Like the pioneers who rode their horses long country miles to visit their far-flung neighbors, we greet the students and their adults, offer up the artifacts and let another generation experience the texture of Charles Cumberledge’s life – explained to them by his great-nephew, who just happened to be there. We’re living a moment that will be laughed about and shared with friends for years – the day Matt Cumberledge gave an impromptu history lesson in the cemetery of Pine Bank Church in the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020.