A self-described organization of oddballs endured the biting cold Saturday afternoon to honor and decorate the final resting places of some of Clark County’s pioneers.
The fraternity, which calls itself The Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus, raked leaves and strung Christmas lights at the Old City Cemetery at East Mill Plain and Grand boulevards in Vancouver. Among the pioneers buried there are Esther Short and Charles Slocum.
“Today we’re decorating and giving the cemetery a little bit of holiday love,” said Eric Klein, a leader of the group.
The fraternity — known as “Clampers” — nailed some of its core tenets with the cleanup: community involvement and historical preservation. There are several chapters around the country who volunteer to clean up graveyards, rehabilitate structures and set up plaques at historical landmarks.
The Saturday cleanup might have been the first to come in Vancouver. Hailey Heath, a volunteer coordinator with the city of Vancouver, said the three city-owned cemeteries could benefit from the Clampers’ efforts.
“We are pleased to be developing this partnership,” Heath said. “This is a place that’s so meaningful. It’s fun to see these guys show their respect for that.”
The chapter working Saturday would be called the Capt. Robert Gray Historical Foundation, though they are not yet official in the eyes of the fraternity’s leaders, who reside in California. Theirs is a sort of group of initiates. Members from a chapter in Seattle, who sponsored their membership, were present.
But, the workers Saturday said they weren’t solely driven to clean up the park by the goal of becoming official. Clampers say they are all history buffs at heart, and they respect the past.
“If we can, we’d do it every month,” said Chris McCormick, a historian in the society.
Clampers date to the 1840s among West Virginian coal miners, he said. Miners and other working-class men banded together to collectively thumb their noses at other societies, like the Freemasons, who rejected them.
“The down-in-the-dirt miners weren’t allowed in organizations like that,” McCormick said.
That misfit identity manifests today in members’ nicknames — like “Boy Band,” “Bottlehound” and “Shrek” — and the fraternity’s official motto: “Credo quia absurdum” or “I believe it because it is absurd.” The fraternity’s entry in the online site Wikipedia is no different.
“The fraternity is not sure if it’s a ‘historical drinking society’ or a ‘drinking historical society,’ ” the page reads.
There are hundreds of thousands of Clampers in the United States, mostly located along the West Coast, according to McCormick. The miners migrated west during the California Gold Rush and have since thrived mainly in California, Oregon and Washington, with chapters in Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Idaho.
It’s not all playful. The fraternity places a lot of importance on care of women and children, such as the families of miners who died prematurely in the mines in the fraternity’s early aughts.
Some entertainers, literary figures and dignitaries are named among the ranks of Clampers. Gene Autry was a Clamper, Ulysses S. Grant might have been. Samuel Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain, was a Clamper, as was President Ronald Reagan.
“I’ve always loved history,” said John Lynch, a Clamper from Black Diamond who spent the cold Saturday gripping a rake and cleaning up the weathered graves. “I wish I had a time machine.”
