Jul 07, 2008 - 05:12:28 CDT
Maybe more than any other acreage, a cemetery reveals a community's variegated life. Lives overlap in time, or just miss each other, or are irrevocably separated by years. Each name adds a page, or a paragraph or a footnote to its history.In Fairview Cemetery in east Bismarck, names evoking historic Bismarck - Ramstad, Tatley - live amid marble obelisks with antique pioneer spires and poignant children's epitaphs. A few iron crosses here, a couple of Civil War veterans there. A small neighborhood holds markers incised in Hebrew.
In another section are those whose burials were paid for by community assistance, their last, maybe for some their first, piece of property. On a hillside above a coulee glimmering silver with Russian olive trees, about 60 veterans lie. A high-flying American flag, huge from below, snaps in the wind above them.
Far across the coulee, another prominent rise is home to the Garden of Peace, a special place for children who have died before, during and after birth. Invisible in its trees, in a little sheltered hollow between them is cupped the Bismarck Jewish Cemetery.
Between the newly-widened, fast-moving East Century Avenue and more distant I-94, the landscape recedes to a rural oasis; to the west, the city rises up. High above rows of cedars and Ponderosa pines, a fresh breeze pushes cottony clouds along blue skies, and strokes the hills and valleys like an invisible hand on a beloved creature.
From the two prominences - the veterans' hill and the children's - the gently corrugated hills hold meandering Hay Creek, therailroad bed used by the Dakota Missouri Valley Western, a walking trail, Pebble Creek Golf Course. A pair of handsome horses who lived in a rented nearby pasture notice a visitor's car and stroll over, hoping.
Wildlife is plentiful at Fairview, said cemetery sexton Harlow Bales. Deer, rabbits, squirrels, gophers, turkeys and geese all inhabit these acres.
q q q
Fairview has been here since near Bismarck's beginning, incorporated as a nonprofit, nonsectarian cemetery in 1880, said Warren DeKrey, president of the Fairview Cemetery Association for 12 years.
"We accept any and all," DeKrey said.
Until just recently, Fairview has been out of the common way, but when a section of adjacent East Century Avenue was widened in 2007 - engineers nudged the street construction northward to avoid impinging on any unmarked graves - it's become more visible to the community, he said.
About 4,500 people are buried in Fairview, he said. About half of the cemetery's 80 acres has been developed, section by section, as needed.
A cemetery, like any other home, needs care and maintenance.
"We take pride in the cemetery," DeKrey said, "to make it attractive." The cemetery, which used to have its own well, now uses city water. Dead trees have been removed, and Ponderosa pines and cedars, about 25 of them, were moved, without harm, when Century was widened, he said. Evergreen branches get trimmed for easier mowing. Two mowers run most of the time to keep it all trimmed. Three entrances open off Century; the main entrance was widened from 12 to 24 feet, and plans call for a new kiosk, which will offer a more detailed map of the cemetery.
"That's what a cemetery should be. There's sentiment involved in all this,"he said.
The next big project is the creation of another section of blacktopped road - improvements like this are paid for out of Fairview's perpetual care fund, which all cemeteries in the state are required to have, DeKrey said. Contributions come from the sale of plots and other donations.
In the veterans' section, husbands and wives may be buried side-by-side; people can choose their own lots there as well, he said. The headstones are the same as found in the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery south of Mandan. The landscaping and decorative elements, planters, flagpoles, were put together by Bismarck veterans' organizations, DeKrey said. The National Guard helped level the terrain in 2002.
q q q
Like Bismarck itself, Fairview has its neighborhoods. The markers in the oldest sections of the cemetery, like the oldest sections of town, are an idiosyncratic mix of styles, high Victorian and humble cottage cheek-by-jowl. As the 1930s give way to the 1950s, styles became more uniform, rows of ranch houses for the living and regular rectangles of marble for those who are gone. By the names, you recognize little ethnic neighborhoods, knots of kin by blood and marriage.
In a little hollow, out of the way, is Fairview's small Bismarck Jewish Cemetery; its marker reads "established 1953."
Joy Wezelman, the Bismarck Jewish Cemetery's representative on the Fairview Cemetery Association, assumed the role from her father, Sol Wezelman, a longtime leader of the Bismarck Hebrew Congregation.
Sol Wezelman has the outlines of an immense amount of history committed to memory. Wezelman remembers most of the people buried in the Jewish Cemetery, his first wife also is buried there, he said.
Before there was a Jewish cemetery here, burials would go to Minot, others to Minneapolis, he said. There also is a Jewish pioneer cemetery at Regan, where the last burial was in 1935, Wezelman said.
Al Thal, the son-in-law of Charlie Riegler, one of the founders of Bismarck's Jewish community, was secretary and treasurer of the Fairview Cemetery Association, he said.
Thal and his wife, Bertha, had a stillborn son buried at the Regan cemetery, Wezelman said. Wezelman remembers that Thal brought forward the idea of getting a Jewish cemetery established at Fairview.
"Cemeteries are always in need of money," Wezelman said. Thal proposed that the Bismarck Hebrew Congregation establish a cemetery at Fairview and help it pay the cost of cleaning up rocks in one of its expansions.
Riegler was the first burial there, Wezelman said. Two or three burials at most are done there each year, he said. The space will hold 50 or 60 plots; he estimates 25 to 30 people are buried there now.
The Jewish Cemetery adheres to Fairview's regulations but has jurisdiction as to who is buried in their spaces, he said.
q q q
Atop the rise of Fairview's southwestern perimeter, at the end of a curved, cobblestoned pathway, black marble benches provide a place of rest and contemplation:This is the Garden of Peace, guarded over by the Angel of Hope, the centerpiece of a place for children "in memory of those whom God watches over," as the inscription on the base of statue reads. A "memory pillar" holds inscribed message from families about their little ones.
Small square marble markers labeled 2004, 2005, 2006, show where the tiniest rest. Most are deaths by miscarriage in the earlier stages of pregnancy, laid together in one casket for each of those years.
The Medcenter One Foundation partnered with area funeral homes and Fairview to create the Garden of Peace, said Carrol Meyers Dobler, executive director of the Medcenter One Foundation. Fairview donated the land, and the partners schedule an annual remembrance ceremony and balloon release for parents who have lost a baby. Held in July in previous years, this year's service will likely wait until October, said Medcenter One chaplain Burnette Kunz.
The Angel of Hope statue is one of many placed throughout the country designed to encourage families grieving the loss of a child. The statues were inspired by the book "The Christmas Box," written by Richard Paul Evans, a fictional story of a woman mourning the loss of her child. The angel sculpture is the creation of a father and son from Salt Lake City, Ortho and Jared Fairbanks.
Medcenter One has provided in excess of $55,000 to bring this project to fruition to remember all children lost too soon, Dobler said.
(Reach reporter Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@;bismarcktribune.com. For more information about the Garden of Hope, call Carrol Meyers Dobler at 323-8455.)
Camisa wrote on Jul 7, 2008 6:20 PM:
ideas wrote on Jul 7, 2008 1:31 PM:
Do we have to change our way of buriel? "
Dubbles wrote on Jul 7, 2008 5:00 AM:
harpua wrote on Jul 7, 2008 4:42 AM:
Comments are reviewed for taste, tone and language before posting.
Some comments may be used in the Tribune's print edition.
We value and respect your privacy, but The Bismarck Tribune might
disclose certain information to governmental entities if served with subpoena.