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Washington Evening Journal
111 North Marion Avenue
Washington, IA 52353
319-653-2191
Evergeen Cemetery raises half a million dollars for endowment fund
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield Evergreen Cemetery Board wants the public to know it is more than a quarter of the way toward reaching its goal of raising $2 million in its endowment fund.
The cemetery board announced last November that it was creating an endowment fund, and needed the public’s financial help to continue the necessary maintenance on its roads and headstones. The board built a thermometer to show its progress toward reaching the goal, and placed it on the southern edge of the cemetery so it would be visible to motorists on Kirkwood Avenue.
As of early October, the board had raised $529,000. Cemetery board member Judith Cox said these donations show the Fairfield community is “kind, caring and generous, and the board thanks every person.”
Members of the public should be receiving a letter from the cemetery board in the next few weeks that details what the board has accomplished since announcing its endowment fund in 2023. That includes having the cemetery listed on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act maintained by the National Park Service. For Memorial Day in 2024, volunteers helped members of the public find headstones of their loved ones and lay flowers or wreaths next to them.
Evergreen Cemetery Superintendent Matt Nelson said the half million dollars that has already been raised will generate $20,000 toward the operations of the cemetery next year.
“That’s why it’s important that we get to the $2 million goal, because then it will generate $80,000 a year,” Nelson said. “The [fundraising] is definitely a marathon and not a sprint, but I feel like we’re making really good progress for the first year.”
Cox said the board has benefitted from a couple of families, who wish to remain anonymous, who donated at the $100,000 Gold Level. That is the level where donors can have a street named in their honor if they wish.
Evergreen Cemetery was founded in 1870 by a man named Capt. Clement Jordan, who sought to create a proper and larger cemetery in the wake of his wife’s death in 1865, because he did not feel that the existing city cemetery or “Old Cemetery” offered a suitable burial plot. In the years since, Evergreen Cemetery became Fairfield’s preeminent cemetery, and now stretches over 40 acres and contains the remains of more than 11,000 residents (including the Old Cemetery).
In its 154-year history, the Fairfield Evergreen Cemetery has always been a private, perpetual care cemetery that is not supported by taxes. The board wants to keep it that way, but it’s run into financial difficulties, and that’s why it has embarked on this fundraising campaign called the Fairfield Evergreen Cemetery Endowment Fund.
Those who wish to contribute to the cemetery’s endowment fund can send checks to Fairfield Evergreen Cemetery Endowment Fund at 510 East Stone Ave. in Fairfield, IA 52556. For further information, contact Superintendent Matt Nelson at 641-472-2509 or Ronda Whitney at 641-919-7548, or email ffevergreencem@iowatelecom.net.
Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com
