At the May 23 Pagosa Springs Town Council meeting, several long-time residents, describing themselves as “pioneer families,” showed up to voice displeasure with the town for its role in uprooting century-old lilac bushes at Hilltop Cemetery.
The cemetery maintenance was part of the town’s spring cleanup, and Mayor Shari Pierce said that the town needs to find a “better way to communicate with people.”
Council member Leonard Martinez explained that the “cemetery needed attention,” but that, in this case, the town’s “communication was not good.”
He added that he also comes from a pioneer family, adding, “I feel sorry for what happened” and “we owe you an apology.”
One of the residents stated that the owners of the family cemetery plots were not notified by the town that cleanup was happening, describing the scene as “total devastation.”
“We had no clue that this was gonna happen,” she said.
She added, “I want what was destroyed at my family graves replaced, and I want an apology as to why this happened. I want to know who ordered it. Who supervised it. And why it was done … I will be nice, but I want answers.”
A resident, describing himself as fourth generation, noted that his family “homesteaded here in the early 1900s,” adding that he has “about 30-plus relatives that are buried up there.”
The grave sites were “demolished, as far as we are concerned … In my opinion, that’s desecration,” he said.
“I don’t appreciate that … the people that are here that have people up there, they’ve just been forgotten … There was no input from any of us that the town was taking the graveyard over and changing it from its natural state,” he said.
Another resident describing herself as a fourth-generation native to the area, Barbara Eaklor, stated, “Our plot is trashed. Our lilacs are gone.”
She added that her family has maintained the lilacs around her family plot for “years and years and years” and that now they are “destroyed.”
“We had no knowledge of this and it’s really sad that you all did this. Why? Our plots are our personal property. We should be able to take care of them and dress them up the way we want to, and the town went in and destroyed all of that … I think it needs to be put back the way it was,” she said.
Pierce expressed regret that the town had “goofed” on this, apologizing to the public about the town’s efforts at the cemetery, adding that she would look into replacing the lilac bushes with new lilacs.
She explained that she had first heard about the clean-up effort at the cemetery because her husband has a family plot up there.
“He’s also several generations here in the community. Not as many as you all,” she said.
She explained that once she got a phone call from a longtime local resident alerting her as to what was happening, she immediately advised Town Manager David Harris to halt the clean-up effort.
She said that Harris was “extremely responsive” and that he reached out to the crew working that day and had them stop the effort “until we had time to discuss this.”
She explained that a meeting was called the next Monday morning with the town staff involved “and we had a discussion. And some of the things we discussed were needing to have a better way to communicate with the public about what’s going to be happening at the cemetery.”
She explained the other thing she learned about why the effort was taking place is the town’s effort to better locate the edges of the cemetery and where some of the “older graves are, and where the new graves should be.”
She also said that Administration Services Manager Kathy Harker is spearheading an effort to locate undiscovered and unmarked graves at the cemetery.
“During this process, some headstones were uncovered that we were not aware of,” she said, adding that there’s an effort to find the families that are still here who “might know who are in some of these unmarked graves up there.”
“We need those marked, and that’s a big project that Kathy is working on,” she said.
On the issue of the lilacs, Pierce explained that she understands that planting new lilacs to replace century-old lilacs “is not the same as having the lilacs that” the pioneers planted.
“I don’t want to offend anybody by going and getting new lilacs to replace the ones that your families planted without your permission, so we’ll be discussing that with you,” she said.
She added that she understands the pressures that some of “these old-time families” are facing with a growing, changing community, and that the council is “kind of in the middle, trying to respect those pioneer families, but also trying to take care of the cemetery.”
“Ultimately, the buck stops here. I will offer my apology … and we hope to work with you better in the future … and take better care of the cemetery for all of us,” she said.
Harris then addressed the audience, saying that “the intent was never to desecrate or to defile anything, first and foremost.”
He defended the town staff, saying that he’s learned in the six months that he’s been here “that we have a wonderful staff who cares.”
He explained the cemetery cleanup was part of an annual community event taking place the first week of May, but that the “degree to which” the staff would be cleaning up the cemetery “I was not made aware.”
He said, “Make no mistake, I understand the pain with which you’re coming from,” addressing the families.
One audience member replied, “No you don’t,” discussing the “100-year-old lilacs that were just ripped up.”
Harris explained that he comes from a pioneer family in Texas, which was here “before the republic,” and he understands what “family cemetery plots are about ... and that they are a sacred place,” but “with that being said, clearly communication could have been better.”
He explained that part of the initial cleanup effort was to make future maintenance at the cemetery “easier overall,” and that “we had a lot of growth of oak and lilac, not necessarily on your plots, but across the cemetery, that were posing a fire hazard.”
He noted the way he understood it was that the staff’s first objective was to address “the fire issue,” and that the second objective was to identify “where the current plots are and where the future plots are,” saying that the “overgrowth” has made it difficult to account for all of the plots.
He said that during the cleanup “there were 10 graves that were uncovered that were overgrown. These are people who came before us and need to be respected and appreciated.”
He added that the town is working on finding out to whom these graves belong.
“Many of these people who are in these unmarked graves, their families aren’t here anymore. They’ve become our families, and we need to show respect,” he said.
The town did not intend to do “anything malicious,” Harris said, adding that he understands that sometimes “we step on toes.”
He added that “if it’s at all possible, we would like to fix what we have done wrong and seek your forgiveness.”
He suggested that the community needs to have a larger conversation “about this beautiful resting place and what we want for it in the future.”
He ended by adding that he has also heard some community members comment on “how good” the cemetery looks after the cleanup.
Pierce then got the contact information from the residents in the audience, offering that the town would meet individually with each of them to address their concerns and seek the best way to remedy the situation, which could include replacing some of the lilacs.
derek@pagosasun.com
