Park and recreation professionals draw immediate connections between the management of cemeteries and the management of other public assets. Much like parks or historical landmarks, modern-day interment sites are sanctuaries that reflect the cultural heritage and preserve the landscapes of their communities.

But death invokes deep emotions, and these emotions can greatly enhance the connections people have to the places where their loved ones are interred. And as anecdotes from the field suggest, it’s this unique factor that helps define the way agencies are engaging in cemetery management.

Managing Human Emotions
The emotionally charged events surrounding death mean that management of a cemetery is often forced down to a micro level. When speaking of the 59-plus-acre active interment site managed by Mentor, Ohio, Parks, Recreation and Public Facilities, Director Bob Martin says helping people through the grieving process is about knowing when to adapt. “We make sure that whatever we do, it is done with respect for both the people who have passed and their families,” he affirms.

As an example, Martin points to the way they regulate the decoration of monuments and gravesites. Although strict rules have been established regarding the placement of flowers and mementos, many people will do things that don’t fall within bounds. It then becomes about determining on a case-by-case basis what’s appropriate so as to not negatively impact people’s impressions of the cemetery.

“At Christmas time, a family that lost a child brings out Christmas ornaments and decorates a tree close to the grave,” Martin says. “We don’t take the ornaments down, but at some point, the family realized we were letting them put them up [against cemetery policy], and shortly after Christmas, they come and remove them on their own.”

Martin sums it up by saying, “Each person is treated as a person.”

According to Pat Armstrong, director of Parks, Recreation and Cemeteries in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, the strong emotional attachments people have to her city’s seven active cemeteries (with one dating back to the 17th century) have formally influenced the way her city approaches maintenance management issues. When the department removed a number of trees from the town’s Ancient Cemetery due to disease and bug infestation, a powerful response was invoked from the community.

“We asked a contractor to take the trees down, and he came in during a holiday weekend because it fit with his schedule,” Armstrong says. “The people [visiting the cemetery] were upset. These were 100-year old trees, and they didn’t believe at the time that they were diseased.  They thought we didn’t want to pick up the leaves.”

Public hearings played a critical role in alleviating the families’ concerns, Armstrong says, and now the department is required to hold them when making cemetery-related decisions. “Trees and bushes around monuments are important to people,” she states. “There are reasons why they select certain gravesites. They are sacred, and it’s important to give people the feeling that they have control over those environments.”

Applying Technology
Technology and humanity are often at odds, but for Kissimmee Parks, Recreation and Public Facilities in Florida, computerized tools have been critical to reducing stress and meeting the needs of grieving families in the city’s active, 40-acre interment site.

When Director Dan Loubier was given oversight of Rose Hill Cemetery in 1990, he says it had received little more than general maintenance for years. Loubier spearheaded a $500,000 renovation in 1992 to transform the site into a full public-service facility and restore the historic grandeur of a place where veterans of both the Spanish American and Civil Wars lay to rest.

“So many cemeteries are just archaic in the way they are managed,” states Loubier. “For us, it was about preserving the past and preparing for the future.”

“The strategy was to make things as simple and definable as possible,” says John Burt, who oversaw many of the renovations as Kissimmee’s park superintendent from 1998 to 2005. According to Burt, a major component allowing the city to simplify many processes was the use of GIS, GPS and aerial technology.

First, the city completely resurveyed and replatted the entire cemetery, adding 7,000 new burial sites and making it possible for staff to locate any plot within six inches of error. Additionally, Rose Hill became one of the first cemeteries in Florida to install a computer-based touch screen — accessible during non-staffed evening hours — for searching exact grave locations.

Loubier emphasizes the significant role their GPS, GIS and aerial records played after a hurricane devastated the cemetery in the mid-2000s.

“We had 140 trees that had to be torn down…and many monuments were tipped over, damaged or moved around,” Loubier says. “But we were able to replace all the headstones in the right location, even to the point of knowing if the headstone was in the center rather than the foot of the grave…and it was all because of the replatting process we had done in the mid-1990s.”

Business Planning
The $600,000-plus in annual revenue generated through both interment fees and monument sales fully supports Chestnut Grove Cemetery, a 25-acre site managed by Herndon, Virginia, Parks and Recreation. Cemetery Manager Mike Moore credits careful trend analysis as critical to establishing a fair and viable fee structure — and planning for the future.

Moore says cremation trends, in particular, will be relevant to future operations. “In the Herndon market, the local funeral homes that service us indicate that seven out of 10 adult cases are cremation,” he adds. “That doesn’t impact us as far as our percentage; however, we have been tracking this for five years, and we are seeing traditional burials trending downward and cremation upward. As far as future planning, it will certainly impact our thinking.”

Moore notes that only five acres of undeveloped land remain in Chestnut Hill, and Herndon is considering how additional columbariums and other similar features may ultimately help serve more families. He says, “The pricing structure of the cremation burials will…impact the revenue stream, but [cremation] will preserve the life of the cemetery in terms of how many people we can accommodate.”

Adhering to Laws
In the public realm, most park and recreation professionals acknowledge that erring on the side of caution is good practice when it comes to the law. Armstrong puts forth a specific example, stating, “In Massachusetts, the casket must be sealed in a cement, waterproof vault with a plastic liner so the remains don’t leak into the water system. This forced us to make the decision to always have a witness…to make sure the appropriate equipment was being placed into the ground.”

Armstrong mentions that when the cemeteries were transferred to her department, there were only two people working for that division. Because this resulted in the need to sometimes use private contractors for excavations, there were concerns about the liabilities and environmental consequences that could arise from infractions.

“In many places, [the burial] is witnessed by the funeral home, but now we use one of our own staff,” she adds. “We need to be able to say we know what’s happening on the grounds of all our facilities…and it wasn’t appropriate to put that responsibility on our funeral-home partners.”

Connecting Back
Many agencies recognize the valuable role cemeteries can play in inspiring an appreciation for nature — an idea first publicly espoused by landscape architect Sidney J. Hare in 1897. And in Mentor, Ohio, the ideals of Hare are being realized. According to Martin, his department has started an arboretum in their cemetery grounds that currently contains 40 varieties of trees. “We actively invite people to come to the cemetery as a respectful place for passive recreation,” he affirms.

And in some cases, the regional connections made through a cemetery can be more active, and of course, historical. Loubier notes the popularity of “Dine with the Departed,” an annual fundraising event held by the Osceola County Historical Society in Rose Hill Cemetery. In addition to a tented dinner, a gravesite walking tour — complete with costumed actors — highlights the founders of Osceola.

“It’s now the who’s who of the area that attend every year. The event is educational, it’s a good group of people and it’s a good fundraiser,” Loubier says.  

When asked, Loubier acknowledges his department was initially uncertain about backlash, but he says community response has been incredibly positive. “We respect the folks buried in the cemetery,” Loubier adds. “It’s a very unique and professionally done event.”  

Because cemeteries hold so much value to communities — emotional, historical and natural — Loubier believes good management is about taking into account the personal connections that come with the territory in both the short- and long term.  

“It’s not just over after the funeral is over,” he states. “We are being entrusted with something very near and dear to families, and we must look at ways to continue offering services for many years to come.”  

After all, therein lies the purpose.


Re-Honoring the Dead: Contrabands and Freedmen’s Cemetery Memorial Project
Alexandria, Virginia, is currently developing a new park to honor the resting place of 1,800 African Americans who fled to the city to escape bondage during the Civil War. Forgotten for decades, the burial ground located in the downtown area was once used to inter these freedmen (known then as “contrabands”)—many of whom were Union soldiers.

All the troops interred at the site were moved to Alexandria National Cemetery in 1865; however, archaeological studies done between 1996 and 2007 identified 500 still existing graves. Archaeologists also discovered a 13,000-year-old Paleoindian Clovis point, suggesting the site’s prehistoric significance.

Ron Kagawa, division chief for park planning, design and capital development, asserts in-depth pre-planning as key to a historic cemetery project.

“The cost of a project is not constructing it. The cost of a project is maintaining it over time,” he says. “It is critical to consider how the site will be maintained and sustained during the design phase — not after it’s constructed.”

Additionally, Kagawa notes the contributions made possible by the archaeological and historical research, which include the creation of a spatial-mapping tool and information database of each grave, as well as the development of guidelines for the construction process.

As with any project, there are constraints, and the challenge, Kagawa believes, is to find opportunity in them. To this effect, the city conducted a memorial design competition in 2008 and a public art competition in 2012. Designs submitted by Alexandria architect C.J. Howard have been used as the framework for the memorial, which will also commemorate the dead with a 9,500-lb. bronze sculpture by California artist Mario Chiodo titled “The Path of Thorns and Roses.”

The memorial is scheduled to open in 2013.

Principal partners include the Office of Historic Alexandria; the Transportation and Environmental Services Department; the Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities; and the Friends of Freedmen’s Cemetery. Additional funds were provided by the Federal Highway Administration, the Virginia Department of Transportation and a grant from Save America’s Treasures, a public-private partnership of the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.


Amy Kapp  is a freelance writer in Northern Virginia.