Story Published:
Oct 4, 2007 at 3:36 PM CDT
Story Updated:
Oct 4, 2007 at 3:36 PM CDT
SPRINGFIELD -- The ice storm in January didn't only displace the living; it also inconvenienced the dead -- in particular, one historic cemetery that dates back to the days of the Battle of Wilson's Creek. This weekend, just about as many living people as buried ones were in the small, historic McElhaney Cemetery to help clean up what the ice storm left behind.
Most people, like Susan Issolah, don't even know a single soul buried here.
"There is no one else here to do it," said Issolah, "but the volunteers."
"We owe something to the people who came before us," said Gene Davison, the caretaker for the McElhaney Cemetery.
Davison pointed out some of the inscriptions on old headstones.
"This is a woman who was born in 1799 and died in 1900," he said, "and had the unique fortune of living in three centuries."
Davison feels a personal connection with the people here so, when the ice storm left debris on the property, he says he knew he had to help.
The ice storm did a lot of damage but this is certainly not the worst the cemetery has seen. This plot of land had been abandoned for about 15 years before Davison and his wife, Linda, took over. The people who took care of the land before the Davisons put down gravel because, as they got older, they were afraid no one would be able to take care of it.
"And we felt that the people who were buried here deserved better than to have this fall into that condition," said Issolah.
To the volunteers, keeping the cemetery clean is about more than a good deed.
"But it's also kind of neat historically to look at different tombstones and see how they lived," Gene Davison said.
