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Giving Back: Grave Interest in Honoring the Dead
Grave Interest in Honoring the Dead
by Jo Crabtree
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Busy lives, daily activities and countless distractions often cloud the vision of everyday Americans who rarely think about a cemetery until a loved one dies, or they attend a funeral.
Having a down day? Discouraged by the condition of the world? A magnificent way to take inventory, to embrace perspective — for any generation — is to make it a priority to visit a burial ground or a cemetery in a local community. Walking among the headstones of the dead, you quickly acquire insight into the many lives by viewing inscriptions carved on a stone at the head of their graves, as well as expressions of love and devotion left behind by family members. Telltale signs of how they may have lived and pain they may have experienced. They — like all of mankind — have faced daily struggles for survival in a vast world of the unexpected, and at times insurmountable, challenges of life. Given the opportunity to stop and digest such an experience can be a peaceful pursuit.
There are special and devoted individuals, or caretakers, who are equipped with compassion and love to administer honor and respect for those who have lived before, whose footprints are left behind and unseen by present inhabitants on the same parcels of land and obscured in America’s cemeteries. Some, more than others, as there are two such individuals who spend hours of their lives doing just that in the Ramona Cemetery.
Volunteers are no stranger to Ramona. Over the years, many have devoted their personal time and efforts for the continuing care and upkeep of the graveyard. It is my blessing and joy to know one such individual who spends countless hours and dedication to just such an endeavor. Ernest Dean Crabtree is life-time resident of Ramona and a volunteer at the Ramona Cemetery.
A life of service is nothing foreign to Ernie, who served two tours in Vietnam in the Army on a helicopter as a combat medic (military evacuations) for those injured or deceased. His second tour of duty was driven by concern that if he went back home, he would be letting friends and fellow Army buddies down.
Ernie has been a constant in the community for many years, always ready to help out, assisting family, friends, and neighbors. He is a person of great compassion and desire to serve others. He works closely with Cemetery Sexton Holly Ward, who has managed the Ramona Cemetery for approximately 25 years. While Ward is in charge of the Cemetery, the two work together to discover burials that are not located and who do not have headstones. For those individuals whose families never set a headstone, or did not have the funds, or the means to do so, their desire is to recognize and honor those lives. Determined to honor every individual who is buried in the cemetery, Ernie spends many hours hand-making blocks of cement. He uses a dremel to carve into the stone the name, birth, and burial dates when he has them, in order to mark their graves. He is giving them individuality and value as a life lived, and at the same time hoping to make it possible for loved ones or family to have tangible evidence of that person’s life on earth.
To that end, Ernie spends many hours dousing graves to locate bodies that have been buried in often inopportune places. Due to the age of the cemetery, many are unidentified and unmarked in any way. Numerous old records were lost in a fire in early years and much effort has been dedicated to trying to reconstruct as many of the burials as possible.
Mayor of Ramona Cyle Miller said of Crabtree, “Ernie is a great asset to the community. I see him frequently at the cemetery and I am always amazed at the countless, possibly hundreds of hours he devotes to working at a thankless job. I have helped him on occasion and have seen the hundreds of homemade headstones he sets out all over the cemetery for those who were less fortunate to have a professionally-crafted headstone.”
Citizen volunteers are always available to serve on the cemetery board. One such individual, Elizabeth Little Collins, of the well known Ramona “Little Ranch,” worked closely with the board for several years. One of the legacies she left before her death was a refurbished, very nice cemetery office in the old historic jail next door to the old bank building, later the town post office for many years on Main Street.
Every human born lives a life of dreams, memories, and emotions. Their lives have untold and unknown stories, happiness, tragedy, love, and sorrows. Without knowledge or research it is often impossible to know who they were, or who their families were.
Every cemetery or burial throughout the nation includes an expression of life if you care to look deep enough at what you see. Life is not obsolete as long as we continue to respect it, revere the privilege and the blessing of it. God gives life; let none of us ever take it for granted. "Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” — Genesis 2:7
This is a Cemetery
“Lives are commemorated — deaths are recorded —families — memories are tangible — and love is undisguised. This is a cemetery.
Communities accord respect, families bestow reverence, historians see information and our heritage is thereby enriched.
Testimonies of devotion, pride and remembrance are cast in bronze to pay warm tribute to accomplishments and to the life — not the death — of a loved one.
The cemetery is homeland for the memorials that are a sustaining source of comfort to the living.
A cemetery is a history of the people — a perpetual record of yesterday and a sanctuary of peace and quiet today. A cemetery exists because every life is worth living and remembering — ALWAYS” — Author unknown
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