May 2013 - Parks & Recreation - 50

MANAGING SACRED GROUND

Industry Fact:
Using PRORAGIS data, NRPA estimates that today, 26 percent of local
park and recreation agencies manage cemeteries - and of those agencies, 18 percent are managing active
interment sites.
However, the industry practice was
already prevalent enough in 1964 for
the American Institute of Park Executives - a founding organization of
NRPA - to publish a 28-page management guide aptly titled Municipal
Cemetery Management for Park and
Recreation Departments.

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.

" A cemetery is a history of people - a perpetual
record of yesterday and a sanctuary of peace and
quiet today... "
- Mary Lou Brannon (Brannon Monument Company)
" 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

Kissimmee Parks, Recreation and Public Facilities

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.

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
Rose Hill Cemetery in Kissimmee, Florida,
was recently replatted with the help of GIS
and GPS technology.

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May 2013 - Parks & Recreation

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