As a seminarian in the 1970s, Richard Peterson earned summertime money at Catholic cemeteries — mowing grass, trimming around gravestones, weeding flowerbeds and sometimes helping at graveside services.

“It was work, it was outdoors, it was seeing what they do at the cemeteries, and it was getting dirty,” Peterson said. “And actually I liked it. It was a good group of people to work with.”

Since those summers, he has worked for five Seattle archbishops and reported to four archdiocesan chief financial officers during his tenure as head of archdiocesan cemeteries. But “the most important people on the earth are those family members we serve every day,” said Peterson, who is retiring June 30.

Over his 47-year career — a vocation, really — Peterson has been a groundskeeper, a superintendent and, for the past 32 years, director/president of Associated Catholic Cemeteries. The organization operates the four archdiocesan-owned cemeteries: Calvary in Seattle, Holyrood in Shoreline, Gethsemane in Federal Way and St. Patrick in Kent.

After discerning that his call was to serve in cemetery ministry, Peterson has spent his life helping people face painful losses through the lens of the Catholic faith.

“There is nothing darker than losing your loved one in death,” Peterson said. “There is no hope in that,” without belief in Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the body, he added.

And though cemeteries of all sorts are places to remember loved ones, Catholic cemeteries are different, he said.

“We have the opportunity to be a place where people can reconnect, but reconnect in prayer,” Peterson said. “We are not looking in the rear-view mirror. We’re looking forward in joyful hope to that time when we are all reunited again with one another and God.”

Signs and signals from the Lord

Peterson, the oldest of seven, was born in Seattle. The family moved around, eventually settling in what is now Shoreline in 1967, when he was in the fourth grade. They attended St. Luke Parish, where the pastor, Father William Gallagher, encouraged students to consider a religious vocation.

Even as a child, Peterson felt a calling to serve God’s people. And before Vatican II, a boy or man who wanted to serve the Church became a priest, Peterson said.

So he entered St. Edward, which was the archdiocese’s high school seminary in Kenmore. He graduated in 1975, then attended St. Thomas, the neighboring college seminary, before it closed in 1977. Peterson finished his college studies at the University of Washington, and in May 1981 completed two years of graduate study at the Catholic University of America’s Theological College in Washington, D.C.

Feeling the need for further discernment, he decided to take a year off to “really give some thought and prayer into this vocation, this call I felt from God.”

Peterson was able to get his seasonal job back at Calvary Cemetery, where he soon was hired full time. “At some point, I basically realized that while I still felt a call to ministry, it wasn’t the priesthood,” Peterson said.

Later, he realized the seeds of a call to bereavement ministry were planted in the seminary.

“You wonder how the Lord really works in your life and what signs and signals you’re getting,” Peterson said. “I think there already was the budding sense that hey, there are people that are hurting, and we are church and how do we serve these people and help them?”

Catholic cemeteries are countercultural

Peterson’s ministry goes beyond the corporal work of mercy of burying the dead and supporting grieving families.

“I have come to really believe that what we do at Catholic cemeteries is foundational in the ministry of the Church,” he said during an interview at Gethsemane Cemetery. “These people who are buried in this cemetery are a witness to everybody in South King County — Catholic and non-Catholic — that the Church values the human person, sets aside sacred space and has this place of prayer.”

It’s a countercultural message in a society where talk of death is avoided and people are increasingly judged “on their usefulness, not their sacredness,” said Peterson, who was appointed cemeteries director by Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen in 1991 and is a past president of the international Catholic Cemetery Conference.

“If we believe that these bodies of ours, which are temples of the Holy Spirit, are going to rise again — however God is going to do that — then our bodies deserve dignity and respect in death and (in) where they’re placed while we’re all waiting together as community,” Peterson said.

On the consecrated grounds of the four archdiocesan Catholic cemeteries, more than 91,500 people are waiting in community, about one-third of them laid to rest during Peterson’s 32-year leadership tenure.

Those who have been laid to rest and their loved ones receive care from the archdiocesan cemeteries’ 45 employees who “are focused on serving those who come to us,” Peterson said. “We have wonderful, dedicated staff who give a lot.”

Over the years, Peterson has also served as a consultant for the 20 cemeteries around the archdiocese that operate as parish-based ministries. “It’s life-giving to me to be working with parish leaders who have such a love and concern for their cemeteries,” Peterson said.

Spending nearly a half-century in cemetery ministry has been a privilege, he said. It’s been “personally and spiritually fulfilling,” while also allowing him to support his family.

Soon Peterson will begin a retirement adventure with his wife Mary Anne. (Married 40 years, they preplanned their burial space when they got engaged.) They will head out in their fifth-wheel trailer to explore the Alaska Highway and Denali National Park and Preserve, hoping to make it to the Arctic Ocean in Canada. It’s something that’s been on Peterson’s bucket list for years.

When they return, he is looking forward to spending more time with family, including their son, daughter and two young grandchildren. And he plans to volunteer more at his parish, St. Vincent de Paul in Federal Way.

“I love the Church, and I love doing things with the Church,” Peterson said. “It gets me excited; it makes me feel good and I hope I make a difference for people.” 

GIVING THANKS

As Richard Peterson prepared to retire June 30 as president of Associated Catholic Cemeteries, he thanked some of the people key to his 47-year career:

•      Father Michael G. Ryan, vocations director when Peterson entered the seminary.

•      Father William Heric, who as a fellow seminarian told Peterson about summer cemetery jobs.

•      Father Joseph Doogan, former cemeteries director, “a supporter for me throughout my whole career until his death.”

•      Jerry Healy, the cemeteries director who “encouraged me to do more and allowed me to do more.”

•      Mary Lou Martinez, the “always supportive” office staffer at Calvary.

•     Joe Sankovich, cemeteries director who “took a chance,” promoting Peterson into management.

•      Archbishops Raymond G. Hunthausen, Thomas J. Murphy, Alexander J. Brunett, J. Peter Sartain and Paul D. Etienne.

•      Archdiocesan chief financial officers through the years: Pat Sursely, Frank Feeman, Joe Schick and Megan Slivinski.

Read the rest of the June/July 2023 issue of Northwest Catholic here.