City wants to spruce up cemetery's veterans' section

The veterans’ section at Mount Hope Cemetery is in need of work to straighten headstones and repair a bordering fence.

By TERRI HARBER
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Baker City has formed an advisory group to plan improvements in the veterans’ section of Mount Hope Cemetery.

Members include city and county employees, representatives of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion groups, the proprietor of a headstone business, and the city’s park maintenance contractor.

They walked the grounds, on the south side of the city-owned cemetery on South Bridge Street, last week.

Carol Tone, a member of the VFW ladies’ auxiliary, was glad to hear the veterans’ section is getting more attention.

Tone spoke about the condition of the veterans’ area during a City Council meeting in early June. This was not long after Memorial Day, when an annual ceremony marking the holiday takes place in the veterans’ section.

And it wasn’t her first visit regarding the matter because it has been an ongoing concern, she’s quick to point out.

“Graves sinking, stones wiggle-wobbling,” she told the councilors at that time. “Something has to be done.”

Tone cited other problems, such as holes in the ground and crooked markers. She and others have tripped while walking around in the section because of holes and uneven ground.

“Somebody is going to get hurt,” she said again this week.

“We’ve just started looking around,” said Dennis Teskey, owner of Gray’s West & Co. Pioneer Chapel. He also is owner of Stone Tributes, which will donate manpower and equipment to help improve the veterans’ sections.

Headstones will sink, tilt and loosen over time. Years of the ground freezing and thawing will take a toll on how the markers lay and their overall condition. Concrete deteriorates, Teskey also said.

“It’s a natural practice,” he said about changes that occur.

Making the overall layout of the headstones appear more uniform isn’t going to be an easy task — especially given that the veterans’ section is on a slope, said Michelle Owen, the city’s public works director.

The grave markers need to remain close to the graves for the sake of identification and in respect to those buried there, she emphasized.

It will be a slow process. It’s likely only one small part of the veterans’ section will be worked on at a time, Owen said.

The community interest brewing about the veterans’ cemetery is gladdening, and Owen was happy to see Teskey become involved because of the expense and the expertise necessary to properly straighten and realign the headstones.

The headstones aren’t part of the city’s perpetual care agreement. And it’s a task that’s harder to undertake than it sounds because of all of the factors Teskey noted, such as location, weather, ground conditions, and the age of some of the graves, he said.

Other repairs and upgrades sought within that section of the cemetery include illuminating the U.S. flag with a solar-powered light that aims more directly at the flag than before, and making the area easier to walk through by filling in the numerous holes.

Cattle also have been roaming onto the grounds from adjacent property. The owner has promised to watch the livestock more vigilantly.

Jason Yencopal, the county’s community development director, is writing a grant seeking state funds to help pay for the improvements. The request must be submitted by mid-September.

Yencopal expects the grant would cover only part of the total needed to upgrade the area, however.

This is where the veterans’ groups efforts will be instrumental, city and county officials say.

The VFW membership is expected to hear about the matter soon. After that, the goal will be to get members and the rest of the community “interested and enthusiastic” through fundraising and volunteerism, said Gary Young, who commands the local VFW group.

This past Memorial Day it was “hard not to notice the conditions there,” he said.

It’s anticipated that local American Legion members will become heavily involved as well because its leader, Dale Dodge, also is on the project’s working board.

The cemetery is divided into several sections. The veterans’ section has more than 350 graves.

It is also a section where upright headstones are allowed.

Much of the work likely won’t commence until later next spring because the current warm temperatures won’t last long enough to complete any substantial work. The ground freezes during winter, making work impossible, Owen said.

Grave sites of people buried at Mount Hope during the early days of Baker City — and not just veterans — don’t always get the attention that newer sites receive because close family members of the long dead also have died.

But even those buried long ago in the veterans’ section deserve additional attention because of what they did for our country, Owen and others involved in the project emphasized.