From remote graveyards to sprawling necropolises, he canvassed more than 100 local cemeteries, inspecting ivy-covered mausoleums, weather-beaten tombstones and weeping-angel statues.
His mission was to identify the final resting place of thousands of war veterans to make sure their names were preserved for history.
In some cases, the graves weren't even marked — a situation he helped remedy.
Meyers (1884-1957) served as secretary-treasurer of the Sons of Union Veterans, curator of the Summit County Historical Society and historian of the Summit County Council of American War Veterans.
Seven afternoons a week, he volunteered as a tour guide at Perkins Stone Mansion and the John Brown House, and visited as many cemeteries as he could in his spare time.
''What I have now keeps me going night and day,'' Meyers told the Beacon Journal in 1949.
He worked for nearly 40 years at Goodyear, joining the Akron company in 1906 when it produced a mere 200 tires a day.
Despite his obsessive hobby, the Tallmadge native never served a day in the military.
He would have been eligible for duty in World War I, but his wife, Eva, died in 1916, and he was the sole provider for his young daughters, Mary and Evelyn.
Meyers' interest in veterans affairs began with his father, Philip Jacob Meyer, a German immigrant who served in the 184th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. (The son later added an ''S'' to the Meyer family name.)
A special holiday
Meyers lived for Memorial Day. He considered it the most important day of the year.
The Sons of Union Veterans assumed the responsibility of decorating Akron graves in the 1930s after the Buckley Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veterans group, dwindled to a handful of 90-year-old men who were too frail to carry on the tradition.
Every Memorial Day, the sons met at the Akron Armory and marched to Glendale Cemetery for its annual chapel service. They escorted the Civil War's last surviving heroes to the solemn rites, then spent the rest of the afternoon placing American flags on graves.
Glendale had about 700 graves of Civil War soldiers.
''The first thing I asked for was records and there weren't any,'' Meyers recalled years later.
So he began to jot down notes when he discovered markers for veterans. At first, he focused on Civil War heroes, but then expanded his research to cover anyone in Summit County who had served in an American war.
Meyers consulted local history books, military rosters and newspaper clippings, and recorded information on cards about veterans' ranks, troop units, years of service, birthplaces and burial sites.
Starting at Glendale, he worked his way out to lesser-known cemeteries such as Bettes Corners, Newton Street, Darrowville, Keiser and Millheim.
In the late 1930s, the Works Progress Administration, a federal jobs program, announced that it was collaborating with the American Legion to send crews to local cemeteries to locate the forgotten graves of service members.
Workers fanned out across the county, brushing old leaves off markers and squinting at faded headstones for epitaphs that hinted at military records.
The WPA project complied with Meyers' request to document all its findings in a book that others could consult.
With the help of the American Legion, Meyers learned that the county's war dead included 75 men from the Revolutionary War, 375 from the War of 1812, 41 from the Mexican War, 2,300 from the Civil War, 300 from the Spanish-American War and at least 1,000 from the World War.
Markers purchased
Not all had headstones.
Notified that some veterans' graves remained unmarked, Summit County commissioners authorized the purchase of hundreds of headstones to be decorated on Memorial Day.
Inevitably, more conflicts were ahead.
World War II and the Korean War were the last in Meyers' lifetime.
''Every night I scan the papers,'' he told a reporter in 1952. ''I mark with a star each obituary I think is that of a veteran.''
Meyers had to retire from Goodyear after suffering a heart attack on April 12, 1945, the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt died.
Cardiac troubles didn't keep the historian from his cemetery excursions. The balding, bespectacled Meyers wore a dress suit and bow tie while roaming graveyards to collect headstone information.
For Memorial Day 1957, he studied epitaphs at the Old Hudson Burying Ground, seemingly recovered from a second heart attack that struck him the previous spring as he climbed stairs at Western Reserve Academy to view a Civil War portrait.
He insisted that his research was a labor of love.
''I wouldn't take a million dollars for it,'' he said.
Sadly, that was his final Memorial Day.
He died three months later —Aug. 23, 1957 — at his home on Sixth Street in Cuyahoga Falls. He was 73 years old.
William G. Meyers was buried in the old Tallmadge Cemetery, a place he knew all too well.
Today, those who visit the historian's grave in Lot 167 will pass ivy-covered mausoleums, weather-beaten tombstones, weeping-angel statues and dozens of star-spangled banners decorating the graves of U.S. war veterans.
Mark J. Price is a Beacon Journal copy editor. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or send email to mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
