5/25/2010
GARY DEMUTH
For nearly 60 years, Phyllis Reese has been involved in the Poheta Cemetery cleanup for Memorial Day.
As a little girl, the Gypsum resident can remember watching the grass at the rural Salina cemetery being cut by a mower pulled by a team of horses. She marveled at the dozens of volunteers pulling weeds and cleaning headstones, readying the cemetery for visiting families on Memorial Day weekend.
“It was an all-day affair,” said Reese, 73. “Our parents brought food and we ate right there in the cemetery.”
It’s a tradition area residents have upheld in the ensuing decades. The reason is simple, Reese said. Nearly every cleanup volunteer has a family member buried at the cemetery, many of them from the Salina, Kipp and Gypsum areas.
“My husband is buried there with his parents, my parents and my granddaughter,” she said. “It’s a private cemetery, and because it’s full of family members, it’s important to keep it up.”
That sentiment even applies to the few unclaimed grave sites, Reese said.
“They’re family to someone,” she said. “There’s a little girl buried here who was crossing the plains in a covered wagon and died. We don’t know who she is, but we take care of her. Now she has a family, too.”
The Memorial Day holiday is a busy time both for volunteers and paid cemetery grounds keepers, whether it’s cleaning up a small cemetery of about 100 graves such as Poheta, near Magnolia and Donmyer roads, or Gypsum Hill Cemetery at Iron and Marymount roads, which sits on 50 acres and contains about 16,000 graves.


Read the rest of reporter Gary Demuth's story in Wednesday's Journal.

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