Cemetery restoration

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The village of Rockyford is investing thousands of dollars to restore one of their historic landmarks, just as their centennial celebration is quickly approaching in 2019. The Rockyford Union Cemetery is the first of many sites receiving a facelift over the next four years, and is estimated to cost anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000.
With the village’s 100th birthday celebration only a few years away, citizens have turned their attention to preserve such crucial milestones.
“I think when we see these milestones in our municipality, we have to remember how we got to be 100 years old,” said Rockyford Mayor Darcy Burke.
“There’s a lot of history in that cemetery, it goes back to before Rockyford was incorporated as a municipality. The gravesites and head stones, a lot of them are deteriorated. They’re apart of the rehabilitation process and felt as though as a part of our history.”
Burke added that this would be the first restoration that has been done to the cemetery dating back to when Rockyford was first established.
He said that this would be a great way to recognize those who settled the areas; they played a key role in establishing the community.
“And that was by our early settlers and those folks that decided to set our municipality in motion,” he said. “I think that’s all a part of preserving our heritage and our history.”
What caught Burke’s attention about the project was the survey that was conducted in the cemetery and the findings that were discovered in the process.
He said that the findings revealed unmarked graves and that the process will be to find those graves and identify them through historical records.
Mary Marshman spearheaded the project in memory of her late husband Dwayne, whose dream was to restore the cemetery and make a piece of history look presentable in honour of the ones that established this community.
“We’ve worked on that cemeteries for years together,” said Marshman.
“That’s always my husband’s dream to restore that cemetery to its original state as much as we could.”
A group of enthusiastic individuals will be helping with the restoration while there will be a cemetery maintenance company coming in with supplies to insert pieces of the project.
“The domes are of cement,” said Marshman. “Over time they disintegrate and they don’t do that anymore for gravesites. Some of them we’ll be able to do, the people that are doing it, that’s their specialty. They also do other cemeteries. They’ve brought in a couple of grave tops, domes from other cemetery, that no longer want to do that.”
As a part of the restoration, there will be a plaque put up in memory of the people that are buried in cemetery.
If people are interested in donating, they can go to the Village of Rockyford’s office.