R.I.P.

Page 1 of The Daily Record, published in Lawrenceville, Illinois on Tuesday, April 8th, 1941

The near balmy breezes of the van guard of Spring evenings last night sent many families from the supper table to the curb for a brief drive. And not a few chose to take a turn or two along the new gravel drives in the Lawrenceville city cemetery before turning.

No doubt the caretakers took a great deal of pardonable pride in the surprised looks on the faces of those who had not driven through the park-like burial ground since last fall.  For all during the winter months working patiently against the cold, Elwood McKeigan and his ever-changing crew of NYA boys have been clearing away brush leveling off slopes and filling in gulleys, planting trees, shrubs, bulbs, and grass in their seasons, and beautifying the property in general.

McKeighan was placed in charge of the new addition, acquired by purchase after the necessary legalities of a hotly contested bond election. But the new section died not benefit alone from the program of improvement.

An old little-used approach from State Road One along the south bank of the Embarrass River is now a wide well graveled and carefully landscaped drive. Rows of young trees have been transplanted along the edges and shrubs and uncountable iris plants are bursting through new soil on both sides of the drive. A brick walk, the material for which consists of old discarded building brick, has a good start and will soon provide for pedestrian traffic to the highway. 

Other approaches and gateways have been widened and freshly graveled.  A concrete and brick gutter replaces the old badly eroded gulley that did a poor job of carrying off water.  Little foot bridges dot it course.  A new Ladies restroom has been constructed and a new tool house and benches built from lumber grown on the premises.  Kelly’s sawmill soon reduced the felled trees to useable limber without charge.

The Potter’s Field has been beautified and is no longer the isolated and gone-to-seed patch it was.  The gulley washes so familiar to citizens up until a year ago haven filled in and are now sown in neatly trimmed grass.

Over in the new section are the recently completed drives, wide and well graveled.  Lots are laid out with a system, and it will be more than 100 years before the present plan for burial of the deceased is completed. 

The American Legion has been granted a section and there is talk of a permanent platform and standing area for ceremonies of the organization. Representatives of the local Catholic church are not discussing where their burial ground is to be.  A special section shall be given over to this denomination for exclusive use of Catholic families.

Perhaps the most touching and extraordinary feature of the new program is the Babyland. It tugs the heart of the most stern-visaged resident to park for a moment at this huge heart shaped plot.  Around the heart forming its border are to be buried tiny tots who leave this world before they really know they are here.  Young families who are not yet in position to think of a family lot may bury their children with the other tiny occupants of Babyland.  Efforts are now being made to have a suitable statue erected in the center and the caretakers vowed to give special care to this section.

And the cost to the taxpayer? Not a cent outside of the portion allotted in the purchase bond issue.  And not even all that.  Of the $1200 ear- marked for landscaping and maintenance, $400 went for legal and election expenses and the like and the $800 was all that was left for the actual groundwork.

Plants. shrubs, trees and flowers have been donated by generous townspeople and rural residents. Cast off materials have been contributed by local industrial plants.  Much of the planting was done without cost by Pat Dowell, local florist.  And many hours of work have been put in by the caretakers, Elwood McKeigan in the new section and old “Uncle” Harrison Mitchell in the old.  Uncle Harrison, as early risers can testify, is up at three or four o’clock in the morning during the warm months, mowing, clipping and changing over the cemetery.  He takes prides in his job and the almost spotless condition of the grounds show his pride is justified. 

But behind the actual work on the grounds lies the mass of accomplishments in the vital detail department attended by the chairman of the cemetery committee of the city council, Thomas Tink Hoke.

Almost an individual program with him, the schedule of improvement laid out by the genial alderman is seldom duplicated in civic history.  Everywhere over the grounds is seen his handiwork and as any city official can testify, for every brick laid, for every one of the 400 trees planted, there lies another of the tedious details mastered by the alderman. He is modest about his share in the program but all who have viewed the grounds in the past six months agree that he has erected for himself an everlasting monument in his modernization and beautification of the Lawrenceville City Cemetery.