Mansfield cemeteries join forces for cleanup

By Amanda Rogers

Mansfield Record

Jeanette Holland has three generations of her family buried at the Mansfield Cemetery, but until recently, she didn’t know who cared for the graves.

On Saturday morning, she found out, when she and dozens of volunteers showed up to rake leaves, scrub headstones, trim trees and dump brush, branches and trash into a massive Dumpster.

Mansfield Cemetery and Mansfield Community Cemetery, which are adjacent just off Burl Ray Road, rely on their cemetery associations and volunteers to care for the historic sites. The cemeteries, both of which have graves more than 100 years old, held a joint cleanup Saturday.

“Honestly, I didn’t know they used volunteers,” said Holland, who arrived Saturday morning with tools and dish soap to scrub her family headstones. She planned to clean her relatives’ graves and then pitch in to help with the rest of the cemetery.

Paula Dycus McKay, president of the Mansfield Cemetery Association, has been cleaning her family’s graves for years. She said it was a tradition on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and other holidays.

“My mom is here, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, my great-great-grandparents,” she said. “As a citizen, we have a responsibility to respect, restore and preserve the cemetery. (The cemetery association) spend $35,000 a year on maintenance, tree trimming, water lines, landscaping and vandalism. It’s not a perpetual care cemetery. We work all year long on things that go unseen.”

Dozens of volunteers, many from Just Serve, a service organization composed of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, worked throughout the morning, cleaning up gravestones of people they had never met.

The sight of so many volunteers made McKay want to cry, she said.

“We have a vested interest,” she said, nodding toward her family’s graves. “But they don’t.”

Jackie Anderson, a member of Bethlehem Baptist Church, said she felt blessed to help.

“It’s a humbling experience,” she said. “It’s nice to see people working together. Despite our differences we are working together. That’s what God would want us to do. It starts with unity.”

The two cemeteries were once divided by a fence, separating the predominantly white Mansfield Cemetery from the predominantly Black Mansfield Community Cemetery. An old, gnarled fence, which was removed several years ago, served as a reminder of a more racially divided time in Mansfield. A piece of the rusted wire fence was unearthed during Saturday’s cleanup, and the final pieces were removed.

“When we come out here together, it shows we have come a long way,” said Mayor Michael Evans, who also serves as pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church. “We are a diverse city in thought, not just ethnicity. We have a lot more in common. This is that on display.”

Abree Fritter, 12, and Preslie Walk, 14, spent their morning washing dirt and debris off headstones decades older than themselves, marveling at some of the names.

“It’s cool to clean this place,” Fritter said. “All the weird names that they had back then.”

Walk was saddened by the number of infant graves they discovered, but happy to have discovered others.

“We found three graves under a tree,” Walk said. “They had no idea they were there until today.”

Rev. Ronny Phillips of Bethlehem Baptist was pulling weeds and cutting brush in the Mansfield Community Cemetery on Saturday morning. He paused to watch the volunteers of different ages and ethnicities.

“This shows that we can work together,” Phillips said. “If the dead can bring us together, why can’t we come together on our own?”

The cemeteries try to hold an annual cleanup day, McKay said.

City Council member Tamara Bounds said she tries to come every year.

“These people contributed to us their whole lives,” Bounds said. “The least we can do is give back while they lay here and rest.”

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