PRAIRIE DU ROCHER, Ill. – There were passion and tears over a lack of upkeep at the historic St. Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, which is part of the Belleville diocese.
Things suddenly turned brighter just moments seemed to be at their darkest.
Prairie du Rocher is about 50 miles south of St. Louis. It’s the kind of town where everyone seems to know everyone. These days, everyone seems to know there are problems at the cemetery and something needs to be done.
“This is probably one of the older cemeteries,” said Gil Atkinson, whose son, Corey, is buried at St. Joseph’s. “It’s over 300 years old.”
Gil and his wife, Wanda, will be buried alongside their son. They and others with loved ones buried at St. Joseph’s say the grounds have been treated as something less than sacred over the past couple of years.
Infrequent mowing and trimming have been the biggest issues. In-ground markers are so overgrown in spots that they’re hard to read.
People have started doing their own trimming and mowing, in violation of cemetery policy.
“The grass was just so spidered over it,” said Gina Brunkhorst, who weeded multiple graves of her loved ones this past Sunday.
“You can see how much,” she said, lifting and sifting a wad of grass and weeds. “I spent two hours out here weed-eating around these. This is their finally resting place! Show how much we love them!”
People say they’ve been chastised, even threatened, for trying to improve the grave sites.
“I feel like I don’t want to be out here,” Wanda Atkinson, standing at her son’s grave, said.
He died in 2003 from complications from his battle with bone cancer, just shy of his 18th birthday. There happens to be a lawn mower featured on his headstone. Overgrown conditions are especially troubling to his family.
“He wouldn’t want it like that,” Gil Atkinson said. “He cut grass here in town. That lawn mower that’s there (on his headstone), that’s his lawn mower, that he would cut people’s grass here in town. It’s just like we’re close to him (here). We come out here and talk to him. I do that a lot. I come out here and talk to him.”
St. Joseph’s pastor, Father Sebastian Ukoh, made a surprise visit to people gathered at the cemetery, Tuesday. He told them he understood their feelings. He said the cemetery’s caretaker had just quit a night earlier and so did the cemetery’s mowing service, but he made temporary arrangements to have a small team of parishioners to mow and trim, in accordance with insurance requirements, while a long-term solution is worked out.
Within a couple of hours, mowing and trimming were underway, hard at work at St. Joseph’s Cemetery, befitting those laid to rest and those who will never stop loving them.
