Cemetery

Trimmed trees, manicured lawns, and maintained roads all have a cost. Residents of a city depend on its workers to keep their hometown attractive. The upside is improved quality of life, property values, and a sense of community. Perhaps no place in Wilmore represents this mindset more than the cemetery. Of course, most of the living happens elsewhere. But there are ways in which it could be argued that the cemetery, though quiet, is the heartbeat of the community. Mayor Harold Rainwater has referred to those who are buried there as still being “residents” of Wilmore.

Driving back home to Kentucky to visit our children's grandparents (our parents) proved to be a precious, but exhausting, experience for our family of four: father, mother, son and daughter.   Arriving on a Friday in time for supper, our family would be seated for a royal Kentucky feast: ham, turkey and dressing, creamed potatoes and sweet potato casserole, green beans, lima beans, fresh hot rolls, and pies of several flavors, fare you would associate with a small town, county seat, Kentucky holiday family gathering.

The Boyle County Sheriff’s Office is seeking help finding the people responsible for stealing from a local cemetery. Sheriff Marty Elliott said 30 bronze vases attached to graves in Danville Memorial Gardens on Stanford Road were reported missing by the cemetery’s caretaker Tuesday morning. Elliott said he was called out again late Tuesday by a woman who had been at the cemetery to visit her son’s grave and noticed his vase was missing. Like many recent thefts and burglaries, Elliott said the desperate nature of the crime is consistent with someone trying to get money for narcotics.

CRAB ORCHARD - Many old military buddies get together for golf outings, but when Danny Godbey and Richard P'Pool hang out, they spend their time in a graveyard instead. "Well, we don't have have greens fees," P'Pool said. All last week, Godbey, a deacon at Crab Orchard Baptist, and his friend P'Pool, from western Kentucky, were busy in the church's cemetery, excavating centuries-old gravestones, repairing them and replacing them upright. The Crab Orchard Baptist Cemetery has graves from as early as the 1790s and as late as the 1930s.

Dear Editor, A week or so ago there was an article in the paper about the Old Union Cemetery not being taken care of properly and how it has run down over the years. My sister, Edwina Morgeson, who has a son buried there, tried so hard to get Robbie Mayes, who oversees the trust fund, to get somebody who would do the job right and take better care of it, but he kept saying they didn't have the money. So she cleaned it up herself, working on it for over three weeks. Then The Advocate-Messenger wrote an article about it, and the morning the story was going to come out the cemetery got mowed.

JUNCTION CITY - Like tumbled dominoes, more than 100 gravestones lay face down in the morning's wet dew at the cemetery here today, the victims of vandalism. A few were more than a century old. Police believe a group of people, maybe juveniles, went to the cemetery Tuesday night and knocked or kicked over gravestones. Some were small and so old the dates and names of the deceased have been erased by the weather and moss. Others were newer and weighed more than 500 pounds. Mayor G.G. Harmon said he will ask the City Council to consider a reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.

Dear Editor: As a bugler for American Legion Post 46 in Danville and a member of the VFW post in Danville, I was disappointed in 2004 we were not able to ensure every veteran grave had a flag for Memorial Day. I hope to be able to resolve that in 2005. In Boyle County, we have more than 140 cemeteries. A number of these may only contain one or two graves, and these may or may not be a veteran. The larger cemeteries will have up to 1,000 graves per acre. I need help. If you are an individual or a member of a group that would like to sponsor a cemetery, I would like to map all of the cemeteries in Boyle County, list the location of any veteran graves in the cemetery (with as much information about the veteran as we can find)

Dear Editor: I am writing this letter in answer to the article in Friday's paper about stones and markers being dumped. This is just another case of neglect by the city of the cemetery. It does not surprise me to hear of this. I personally think Mr. Blenniss needs to go back to where he came from and take our mayor and some of our city commisoners with him. I learned at one of the city meetings that they could care less about anything except the flowers that are planted all over Danville and how to make money.

After several months of planning and discussion at Junction City Council meetings, a new shelter is being built at the city's cemetery. Council member Jim Douglas, who is heading the project, said the brick is being laid this week. Construction on the project began last week and he hopes it will be complete before the next council meeting in mid July. Douglas said the shelter will serve as a place to hold funeral memorials that would normally be held under a funeral home's tent.

Two fallen Danville police officers were remembered Wednesday for making the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty. Danville police, local residents, and family gathered at 2:30 p.m. at Bellevue Cemetery on North First Street to pay respects to late officers John T. Crum and Sgt. James Ryan Sr. Sgt. Ryan was supervising night shift on Nov. 3, 1968, Danville Police Chief Tony Gray told those present. One of Ryan's officers was responding to a situation when he called for backup.

Madge Lair passed away 30 years ago, but her granddaughter says it wasn't until recently that Lair's gravesite at Bellevue Cemetery was targeted by vandals. Margaret Horton, a Danville resident, regularly visits several gravesites at Bellevue. Horton's grandmother, Lair, mother Georgia Proctor, great-aunt Margaret Lair Campbell, sister Georgia Walls and brother-in-law Frank Walls are buried in the city-owned cemetery. Horton says an unknown person or people have vandalized all of her relatives' graves twice this year and that nothing like that had happened to the graves before.

The Wilmore City Council took the final step Monday in enacting an ordinance calling for it to take over operation of the Wilmore Cemetery after going into a closed session to discuss possible problems with the title to the property. When Monday's open meeting resumed, council attorney Bobby Gullette said that any motion to pass the second reading should include a requirement that the Crouse family, current owners and operators of the cemetery, quiet the title to the cemetery. “There are problems with the title to this property that are well-known to the council and would probably never create a significant issue for the city, but given the fact that the property is going to be used in the future as it has in the past, as a cemetery, I think that the potential liability if someone came forward asserting ownership to the property could be significant,” Gullette said.

The second reading of an ordinance calling for Wilmore to take over operations of Wilmore Cemetery was tabled by the Wilmore City Council Monday due to a delay in the deed transfer after the death of Charles Crouse, whose family currently owns and operates the cemetery. The council was split 3-3 earlier this month on the decision to take over the cemetery. Mayor Harold Rainwater cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of doing so, and the ordinance's first reading was approved. The ordinance requires a second reading to be enacted, however.

Wilmore Mayor Harold Rainwater cast a tie-breaking vote Monday to approve the first reading of an ordinance to allow the city to take over Wilmore Cemetery. The vote is one of just a few tie-breaking votes Rainwater has cast in his 37 years in office. “There have probably been four or five times that I've done so,” Rainwater said, adding that he couldn't remember the last time a tie occurred. The mayor said his strong feelings in support of the ordinance led to his vote.

The question over whether the city of Wilmore should take over the public cemetery operated by the C.E. Crouse family for more than 50 years is still unresolved. During a special-called workshop Monday night, council members bantered back and forth on the subject, with one side feeling the city has a moral obligation to take it over, while the other side insisted that it would not be in the city's best interest fiscally. There was added pressure to Monday's workshop, when Mayor Harold Rainwater told the council that he had received an email from the Crouse family indicating that the end of its operational management was imminent.

The Jessamine County Historical Society approached the Nicholasville City Commission on Monday seeking that body's blessing on donating signs and helping improve the aesthetics of Maple Grove Cemetery. Ernestine Hamm, director of the society, approached commissioner Andy Williams in early December with a plan that would call for the donation of lettered signs to be placed in the cemetery with the purpose of assisting people trying to locate grave sites. Hamm said the current signage has faded to the point of being unreadable.

Exciting things were happening last weekend at Spring Hill Cemetery with the ninth annual James Harrod Trust “History Underfoot” Cemetery Tour. We were very pleased with the turnout and overjoyed with the positive comments from those who attended. We think the event is fantastic and are glad to hear others agree. We are pleased to entertain residents of our community as well as visitors.   Some who came were first-timers, while others have been coming year after year. We are glad they joined us this year and look forward to seeing them again at the 2013 tour (Sept.20-21)

HARRODSBURG - Just as the darkness begins to fall over the hallowed grounds, Spring Hill Cemetery will come to life - alive with history that is. The ninth annual “History Underfoot” cemetery tour, sponsored by James Harrod Trust, will begin at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday. On these two evenings, the focus will be on education and entertainment. A guide will escort guests on a tour of the cemetery to “visit” with some of Harrodsburg and Mercer County's ancestors. The early residents of Harrodsburg and Mercer County - some of whom may even be infamous - will share stories about their lives as well as early events, traditions and customs in Mercer County and Kentucky.

The Wilmore City Council had a lot to discuss Monday night but took few actions, opting instead for what is expected to be a lengthy work session next week. One of the major discussions of the night was the possibility of taking over the Wilmore Public Cemetery, currently owned by the Crouse family. Despite heavy financial difficulties facing the city, the council is united in its effort to find a way to take responsibility of the cemetery, which could add at least $20,000 to $25,000 to the budget.