As an expert in monument preservation, Dennis Montagna has to be a craftsman, a good listener, and even a bit of an athlete.
Montagna, 50, directs the National Park Service's monument research and preservation program. It is a job that takes him from his Narberth home to cemeteries and battlefields around the country.
Much of his work is done outside, sometimes on scaffolds. "There's a lot that's physical," he said.
He also said he has to be a good communicator.
"It's a problem-solving kind of job," he said. "I have to find out ways of making things happen."
One of his most interesting recent projects was in Manhattan. While digging for a new federal building at 290 Broadway, the General Services Administration uncovered an African American burial ground.
Over time, layers of dirt had been piled atop the site, and many of the burials were intact, some 30 feet underground.
The skeletal remains were exhumed and analyzed and then reburied, Montagna said, and he chaired the committee to design a memorial to mark the site (www.africanburialground.com). The winner of the memorial design competition will be announced shortly.
"It's a very strongly spiritual place," he said. "The role our office played was to run the public process: What do people want? What does the community in New York think?"
Public meetings were held, and about 700 people made comments, he said. The discovery brought to the public's attention the fact that in the 18th century, 20 percent of New York City's population was either African or of African descent, he said.
Montagna said he divides his time between working on Park Service monuments and helping other federal agencies and city and state governments preserve their own monuments.
He worked on the historic Mikvah Israel Cemetery in Center City, the resting place of many prominent Jewish citizens from colonial days. Descendants of some of those families approached the Park Service and asked for advice on how the names of those buried in the cemetery could be marked, as many of the marble stones had become illegible.
He also is working with the Veterans Administration and park management to restore the national Poplar Grove Cemetery in Petersburg, Va., site of a Civil War battle. Between 5,000 and 6,000 soldiers are buried there.
Montagna said it was important to look at a cemetery as "not just a collection of stones; it's actually a landscape."
