Cemetery clean up Saturday

37 chief

Well-known Member
Our community has an old cemetery established, when the community was settled by German families in the early 1800's. This Saturday is the annual clean up day. It's a weed patch now. Everyone shows up with their favorite weed whip. In a couple hours it is looking good. This the first time I have missed the clean up day, since I was in the Navy. I am in the 5th day of the dreaded disease, but don't feel bad. I will not attend clean up day this year, to keep others safe. Do some of you have small community cemeteries? Stan
 
That is what makes small towns/communities awesome. They take time and pride in local stuff versus the medium large towns where they aka the city takes care of it as a job and not pride/passion based.
 
Yes we do. Early settlers, also German, from late 1800s. I think the last person to be buried there was in the 1930s or 1940s. Anyway there are 2 younger ladies than me that do most of the mowing. I have help from time to time. But my biggest contribution was the rebuilding and painting of the crucifix at the cemetery. I made the new crucifix out of 6 x 6 cedar. The existing corpus measures 27 X 27 and to my surprise, was made of cast iron. Very heavy.
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You can see the grave markers in the background.
 
Same here, St Ludgers Cemetery goes back to 1840s, Father in law and neighbor are Sexton.
My kids and I are next helpers.
We cleaned up before Mayday mass.
Had a community lady donate a columbiarium, (spelling?), For your urns.
Very nice project, company from Minnesota.
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Hadley was helping me finish picking up the sticks, we trimmed four trees to get rock truck in, around.
This cemetery was set up with an endowment back in the early 1980s. Still is active. GG
 
About half a mile from me is our local cemetery, still in use, that dates back to the 1850s.

Back in eastern Colorado, where I grew up, there are hundreds of old cemeteries, all that is left of towns that are long gone.
 
We have a rural township cemetery that gets the official cleanup the first Saturday of April each year. The township trustees gather up old decorations, sticks, and trash and tidy the place up. And we pay to have it mowed during the summer. There is one family that perpetually complains about the lack of upkeep while they contribute the most to the mess. They bring out probably close to 100 decorations to their parent's grave each year and complain when the wind scatters them around the cemetery. And I get the phone call. (sigh --- End of rant). It is gratifying to keep the place up to honor our community's heritage and reflect on the history of our small rural township.
 

My grandpa (84 years old) is our Cemetery president, and I am the treasurer and presumed President in waiting.

It's called Williams Valley Hillside Cemetery in Deer Park, WA. It's a really small cemetery tucked in the woods. Most of the original settlers in this area are buried there, some being from the early 1800's. We usually do a once per year mowing/weed-whacking, plus decorate the cemetery for Memorial Day in honor of the Veterans.

Aside from a really nasty windstorm last year that knocked down 7 total trees, some being over 100 years old, the upkeep is not too bad.


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We (volunteer group of locals called the booster club) just mowed our little cemetery Tuesday evening. Other maintenance is done on mostly a volunteer basis but the cemetery is tax supported, and the cemetery board pays us to do the mowing but trimming around the head stones has always been done by a private enterprise but we learned recently that we no longer have anyone willing to do the trimming. I guess for the time being, I will go to the cemetery on Saturday or Sunday prior to Memorial Day activities and trim around the stones of all our relatives, friends, and neighbors buried there. If each of us would do the same it would probably take care of 80% of it, but there are some really old stones there of folks who no longer have relatives or anyone to care for the grave sites. My wife and I have personally taken time to fill in holes, etc. around grave sites.
 
There are numerous cemeteries around here. The area was settled by people of a wide variety of ethnic and religion backgrounds. When they settled here, they settled in group clusters in small 5 to 10 mile areas. One area might be Swedish, another Irish, another German, you get the idea. They never seemed to all want to be buried in the same cemetery, next to each other. LOL. So they all started thier own cemeteries. And of course, when each town got started, they established thier own city cemetery.

Some of these cemeteries never developed much size. Some are small and or forgotten about today. Most are atleast mowed. A few don't hardly ever see burials anymore.

I have relatives buried in atleast 7 different local cemeteries (within 15 mile area) And that's just scratching the surface of how many there actual are. If that gives you any idea.

The local American Legions do Memorial Day ceremonies at the cemeteries to honor the deceased veterans and fallen comrads. They stand at attention, read off the names, and of course fire a solute and play taps.
Each post does this obviously at the city cemetery, but also at some of the other rural ones too. Some of the very small cemeteries, they don't go to. But still read off those names (as a separate list) at the closest cemetery they do go to.
It's quite moving to witness the ceremony. Hear the names being read off. I try to go to one or two cemeteries for that every year.

My church has its own cemetery. In the back yard actually. The church has a separate board for the cemetery, along with its own separate bank account. Over the years, people have left large amounts of money to the cemetery, rather than to the church itself. The cemetery board basically hires the upkeep done. About the only donated time work day type stuff that goes on, is for storm damage to the trees.
 
You might be surprised Pat .... there are a LOT of city-owned cemeteries which are beautifully kept and maintained and the people that visit their long-departed are very appreciative of what is done. And to suggest that the staff who work there have no pride or passion for what they do is totally biased and unfair. There, my lecture is over. And good on all you country folk who pitch in and get that done on a volunteer basis.
 
YMMV but my daughter is a RN is a very busy ER and when she got it she was told to stay off work for three days then go back. She still did not feel well and was running a slight fever when she went back but she did go back, as have others. No real harm done as it is now just a mild thing like a cold. I would for sure attend your cleanup day. Good grief - you will be outdoors anyway. I just would not tell others about it because some of the lightweight ones will holler.
 
I am a township trustee the township has several small cemeteries township contributes to their funds will be interesting o see how things go for them with price of gas going up.
one man has taken it upon his self to do clean up cemetery next to his farm anything from broken tree limbs to mess after booze parties.
 
I've had two experiences with cemetery managers. My Dad's Uncle somehow or another ended up the caretaker and manager of a few cemeteries in his area. He lived in an area of West-Central Illinois that had a large exodus of people in the 1930's. Many of those people, including my Grandfather, left when they found work in the Chicago area. Years later many of those people started passing and left instructions to bury them back home and provided the name or sometimes a description of where they wished to be buried. This was providing a challenge to many of the funeral directors in the Chicago area as the wishes often stated towns or cities that no longer existed. Eventually they found Uncle Mike, if he wasn't involved with that particular cemetery he new who was. Some of these cemeteries where only accessed through fields and weren't visible from the road, others were associated with long defunct churches. At one point in the late 60's or early 70's one of the funeral directors was overheard telling another if something happens to that old man we're screwed. Flash forward to the early 2000's and I'm a maintenance director for a county building and grounds department. Although not my responsibility the county owned a small cemetery with the newest grave being 50-60 years old and most being 70+ years old. It was the county asylum's cemetery. It's care and management fell within our county HHS department and was usually done by youths that had run afoul of the system and needed to book some community service time. Well they weren't taking care of it and some miscreants got in there and knocked over a few of the headstones. One of the county board members found out and all of a sudden I'm getting called to the carpet for it. No problem I sent a maintenance man over and billed his time to the HHS account. This of course upset then as then things they wanted done no longer had funding to do so. They started doing a little better after that. There are laws regarding the care of cemeteries, evidently they're not enforced equally.
 

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