Cemeteries racing to ready for Memorial Day

The memory of lost loved ones makes grave sites and the condition of the cemeteries that contain them top-of-mind as we approach Memorial Day weekend.

One Southern Illinois grave hunter says she has a concern about a growing debris pile to the rear of the historic IOOF Cemetery in Du Quoin.

The cemetery manager, Mr. Rick Sarensen of Elkville, says that concern will begin to go away this week. "It (the burn pile) has been there for about two years," he said.

He said the fact that a tree line is encroaching on the debris makes it difficult to burn and he will begin picking it apart this week to burn it.

The concerns come from Gail Helton, who says:

"I'm writing with a concern regarding the trash pile and unkept older portion of the I.O.O.F. Cemetery in Du Quoin," she said.

"I have been contributing to the Find-a-Grave website by posting photos of this cemetery's gravestones. The cemetery looks good from the street, but the further back you walk you will find many overturned gravestones...many almost covered up under the earth," she continues. "Another crucial concern is the big trash pile which is very close to the graves toward the southeast corner. My husband and I have personally dug up and reset four stones that were distant family members of mine along with a few other non-family members. We also took a saw and cut back and pulled away limbs that were hanging over a grave that was basically attaching itself to that stone. I had to sit on the trash pile in order to take a picture of that gravestone because the name was facing the trash. It turns out that grave had long be searched for, and he was a veteran of the Civil War."

"I would love to find out if someone like the Boy Scouts or Key Club could help trim back graves so they won't be buried or maybe even set many stones back up. Also, I wonder if money can be raised to get a dumpster to clean up all the trash that is encroaching the graves."

Sarensen and his wife have been caretakers at the cemetery for the past 13 years. There is nothing easy about the work and the cost of the upkeep of a cemetery where above ground monuments have to be navigated around, weeded, then lean sideways and sometimes topple as the ground changes during the rainy season and winter's freezing and thawing.

The Sarensen's work hard and are accommodating to families and to local and area funeral homes that have burials there.

Caretakers at all of the region's cemeteries are working to groom the properties before the upcoming holiday.

There is an unspoken, deeper concern about the IOOF Cemetery, and it is a simple concern.

Who owns the IOOF cemetery?

The IOOF cemetery was founded in Du Quoin by the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows, a fraternal lodge that for years made its home in the IOOF building in downtown Du Quoin.

In fact, the story is told--and seems to be true--that the first burial there in the 1800s came about when a man donated a pig to the IOOF lodge in exchange for his wife's burial.

The east edge of the cemetery is home to a handful of fallen Civil War soldiers and as you walk westward it is the resting place for the town's founding fathers--names like Marshall Browning and R.A. Wheatley and Pope, Wall, Smith, VanKuren and hundreds of others.

The cemetery IS Du Quoin's history.

Years ago as an aging IOOF lodge disbanded, it reached a "management agreement" with funeral director Gary McClure. The agreement carried with it a large perpetual care fund whose investment returns were to help pay for the upkeep. The trust is to stay intact so that it would always generate some kind of income. At the time, some estimated the trust to be over $200,000.

McClure earlier had purchased the Neal Funeral Home, which became the Neal-McClure Funeral Home.He later sold the funeral home to the Pyatt family, but continued as IOOF cemetery manager under the lodge agreement. McClure then took a job with the State of Illinois and left the area.

At the time neither the Illinois comptroller's office, nor the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation could make sense out of any of it.

When the newspaper contacted Sarensen about the care and the upkeep of the cemetery, he says McClure turned the management of the cemetery over to him, but he does not "own" the cemetery. He says the perpetual care trust that goes with the agreement remains intact and that he does what he can with the income to maintain it. "You always want to do more," he said. Every cemetery faces the same struggle.

A few years ago retired Mayor John Rednour said McClure approached him about the City of Du Quoin taking over the cemetery. Rednour told him the city was not interested.

At this writing, it leaves us with the Du Quoin IOOF disbanding, a very fragile "management agreement" that has now passed through two sets of hands and a husband and wife caretaker who want to make sure the cemetery looks as nice as it can before the upcoming Memorial Day holiday.