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Fairfield Evergreen Cemetery making progress on righting headstones
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FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield Evergreen Cemetery Board has been making progress on its campaign to create an endowment fund, and using the money raised to right headstones.
The cemetery has a number of headstones that have fallen over, and fixing them is a lot of work because it involves removing their old foundations and pouring a new one 4 feet deep. Evergreen Cemetery Superintendent Matt Nelson said that three of the four headstones recently righted are quite large, and all four were in a row in a highly trafficked part of the cemetery on the east side.
“People drive through this area, and they’ve noticed these [fallen headstones] for 40 years,” Nelson said. “Every year, somebody asks, ‘What would it take to upright this? Why isn’t it getting done?’”
After a company was brought it to pour the new foundations, Whitney Monument Works helped cemetery staff reset the stones.
Nelson said that fallen headstones not only look bad but they also complicate mowing and weed-eating the cemetery, a massive job considering its size of 40 acres, holding the remains of more than 11,000 residents.
“Once one falls over, you double the amount of trimming you have to do with the weed-eater,” he said, “and we have enough to weed eat around.”
Nelson said it takes an entire week to mow and trim the whole cemetery.
“We try to trim every morning, and mow in the afternoon when it’s dry,” he said.
Cemetery board member Judith Cox said righting these four headstones is a good start, but there are many more to do.
“There are thousands of headstones in need of repair,” she said.
The cemetery has a couple of important and costly expenses on the horizon. One of them is the need for a new backhoe, estimated at $100,000, to replace the existing backhoe from 1979. The streets within the cemetery are in “grave” need of repair, too, and a recent estimate put the figure at $700,000.
Residents can look forward to a new street along the cemetery’s east edge. The cemetery board is using $24,000 from its endowment fund to establish a new M Street, that will extend close to Pleasant Plain Road before turning north along the northeast edge of the cemetery and then looping back west. Nelson said M Street will be gravel to start once it’s created later this year, and then once the board can raise enough to resurface the other roads, M Street will be black-topped as well.
Cox wrote in a statement that Fairfield Evergreen Cemetery board members and volunteers are looking forward to the coming Memorial Day weekend, when they will meet and greet visitors, carry wreaths and help visitors locate the headstone of a family member.
The board has now raised $565,564 in its endowment fund, with a goal of $2 million. Board members are Judith Cox, Keagan Drish, Joe Hunt, Tim Kuiken, Mary Jordan, Dick Reed, John Stever, Jordan Whitney and Kent Whitney.
Donations can be made out to Fairfield Evergreen Cemetery and mailed to 510 East Stone Avenue in Fairfield, IA 52556. For additional information, contact cemetery superintendent Matt Nelson at 641-472-2509.
Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com
