COMMUNITY
STORY BY MIKE IRWIN PHOTOS BY LUKE HOLLISTER
Gravestones and leashes Editor’s note: A version of this story first published in The Wenatchee World in 2011. Facts and figures have been updated. As a regular cemetery walker, I thought about writing a new story based on the same premise, but quickly realized I couldn’t write a better story than Mike Irwin already did. – Marco Martinez
Life flows through city cemetery
F
or Jeff Pulver, three decades of tending the Wenatchee City Cemetery grounds have reinforced one of life’s basic truths: Cemeteries aren’t just for dead people. The constant flow of living, breathing folks through what amounts to North Central Washington’s second-largest city — an interred population of nearly 20,000 souls — provides a satisfying reassurance that death is part of life, said Pulver, lead worker at the Wenatchee City Cemetery, which was added to the City Historic Register in 2019. “For many people, there’s something comforting about these grounds,” he said. “They return, sometimes daily, even if they don’t have loved ones buried here. The stillness, the quiet ... they make it part of their everyday lives. It’s a good place to think about things.”
Brian Daines takes his dog Hank out for an evening walk through the cemetery in early June. September / October 2020
Foothills
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