grave marker

No one knows how long the marker had laid flat at Mountain View Cemetery.

It is one of two wooden markers, said cemetery caretaker Joanna Lanning. One is fairly new, from 2015, and made from two-by-four plywood.

“But the other one is marking the grave of a woman, Alice Gregory, who died in 1892,” Lanning said.

In the midst of fear, sickness and a realigning of the known world, Lanning and a team of concerned staff at the cemetery found a way to rise above the coronavirus crisis in honor of someone who had gone before us.

“The marker had laid flat for years. It is constructed out of cedar and was simply placed in the dirt at the head of the grave,” Lanning said. “The bottom had rotted so the marker had fallen, resting in the grass.”

It was face down. Staff had started on it in February, before the pandemic, when new employee Dalton Thompson, became interested in the smaller markers, Lanning said. Many date to the 1800s when there’s been few family connections to the deceased at the cemetery.

“We don’t have any information on Alice other than her burial date,” she said.

The plot is owned by Mary Nail, who died in 1929 and is buried in another location at the cemetery.

“We’re quite certain Alice has no descendants to remember her passing or repair her marker, so we did,” Lanning said.

Nothing is known about Gregory other than the year of her death gleaned from burial records, so her story is a mystery.

Staff researched what to do to clean and preserve the marker.

“We brought it in — dried it, cleaned it and put a wood sealant on it,” Lanning said.

The drying took a couple of weeks in early March. Then they fashioned a mold out of cardboard and poured a new concrete base for it.

“It was all trial and error,” she said. Unfortunately, since it was an experiment, they used a finer concrete, next time they will use a different coarser blend.

During Lanning’s next cemetery tour in the fall, Alice Gregory’s grave will be highlighted and, by then, a point-of-interest plaque made to commemorate her resting place should be in place.

“It’s a nice, good feeling sort of thing,” Lanning said.

“We have regular walkers here. One had come in and asked me about the trees, when I went to get information, he looked at the marker and saw what we were doing. He came back the next day with a $200 donation,” she said. This will help with their restoration work.

The marker is an unusual shape, because of pieces breaking off, so it’s easy to see. The grave is Mt. View No. 32, in the west section of the cemetery, off Baker Circle.

“It shows we care about those who are here, especially those who don’t have anyone,” Lanning said. “We have a great team, our supervisor, Troy Beckel and Dalton. With teamwork, we get fresh ideas and a variety of talents and knowledge.”