Thank you, friends, for watching and working for North Dakota Today. It was a snowy December morn to talk about Terry Schwartz, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as a community (or 7!) coming together to fix up the Walcott Cemetery.

To learn more about the Bluegrass Association of North Dakota (B.A.N.D.), click here. To listen to Terry’s music and contact him for his album, “Life’s a One-Way Road,” click here.

If you’re would like to support the Walcott Cemetery restoration and Veterans Memorial, click here or send a check to the Walcott Cemetery Campaign, PO Box 74, Walcott, ND 58077.

I told you in the segment there was much more to the story; thank you to Cheryl Anderson for her words:

In September of 2020, I was inspired or “moved to action” by a conversation I had with Lamar Larson, a 90-year-old retired local farmer, a Veteran, a Walcott Legion Honor Guard Member (who marched in the Honor Guard on Memorial Day for over 50 years) and member of the Walcott Lutheran Church.  I was with him at the Walcott Cemetery along with this Son Mike Larson and Grandson Brett as Lemar was picking out a burial site for his Wife Judy who had passed away in March of 2020. Lemar passed away two months after our meeting at the Cemetery from COVID. 

 Lemar said to me “Cheryl, I don’t know if we should be buried out here as who will take care of the cemetery in the future?”  These words surprised me as well as surprised Mike and Brett.  They had never heard Lemar express this before as Lemar’s parents and as well as many other family members are buried in the Walcott Cemtery. 

This conversation bothered me for several months – until the Annual Church Meeting which was held in June of 2021 (delayed due to COVID). As President of the Walcott Lutheran Church, I felt the need to bring forth the idea to do a capital fundraising campaign for the cemetery – and there was unanimous support and 6 people stepped up to the plate to serve on a committee.  

The cemetery was established in 1882 and acquired by the church in 1889. It’s a large cemetery of 4.7 acres and over 660 grave sites. Many of the people buried in Walcott no longer have decedents living in the area and/or are not available to help maintain family burial plots. The cemetery is in three sections: north, middle, and south with the south side being the oldest.  There are even unmarked burials in this area that we need to be cognizant of. Many of the headstones in this section were leaning, broken, soiled from years of dirt and Lykens to the point that you couldn’t read the names of the person buried there.  Some of the headstones are in Norwegian. It was an area of the cemetery that people avoided walking through because of the disrepair.  Each time people visited the cemetery – they would leave thinking that something should be done about this.  But once you left you didn’t think about it again until the next burial. 

 So, a committee of 6 was formed and we began meeting and dreaming of what could be possible.  

Our first step was to call on a company that specialized in headstone repair.  And to our surprise there was a husband-and-wife team – Cherie and Rod Mathison of Monument Solutions/Cemetery Restoration Services from Hickson ND.  We had them do an estimate on the cost of repairing headstones which was ~ $32,000.  To date they have restored 300 headstones and flush markers!  They even found a headstone that had been buried in the dirt for over 50 years. 

We received financial support from the Walcott Lutheran Church Brotherhood and through a matching funds grant from the ND State Historical and Cultural Society. We were given 10 Prairie Rose disease resistant Elm trees from NDSU as NDSU had developed this tree from saplings from a tree that grew on a church members family farm in Horace. We also planted more Black Hills Blue Spruce to boarder the east end of the cemetery which were donated by church members and memorials.  We held 2 worship services at the cemetery on “God’s Work Our Hand’s” Sunday which was supported by a Thrivent Action Team Grant which supplied us with yard work equipment, T-shirts, coffee and donuts and members trimmed shrubs, painted the utility building and fixed up the brick pillars that boarder the cemetery entrance.

The committee began thinking about building a Veteran’s Memorial at the cemetery as this would also help secure the future care of the Cemetery going forward.  We began meeting with representatives from the Walcott American Legion Post 166 Hagen-Helgeson to get their ideas. It was very important to these members that if we built a memorial it had to include the names of the Veterans who are buried in the 7 rural Richland County Cemeteries that they perform the Honor Guard Ceremony at each Memorial Day.  These cemeteries include Christine, Eagle, South Pleasant, Pioneer, Hemnes, South Pleasant/Christine (AKA Lium) and Walcott.  We know that there are ~ 150 veterans names that we are planning for, however we also plan to have room for future honorees.  We are working with Darlene Lee with the Richland County Community Services to get the correct listing of each Veteran buried in these cemeteries.  As she is preparing this list, she is making sure that each Veteran has a Military Marker on their burial site.   

We sent letters to over 500 decedents, friends/neighbors and area business to let them know about our fund-raising efforts to restore the cemetery and to have it be the home of Walcott Veteran’s Memorial.  

Why now? Good question.  We have to do this now when we still have people in the area who remember details and who still have connections.  We cannot leave this to the next generation as it would be even more difficult and overwhelming for them to accomplish this task.  We want to leave this project well established.  We also know that the future of our Church is in question due to declining membership and the limited availability of supply ministers in the ELCA. We currently have access to a church office, a church website, and an administrative assistant to help us with addresses, newsletters and overall communicating our mission. Also, the previous Sexton, Darlan Fatland who served in this role for 45 years before retiring has been immensely helpful in helping us learn the ropes of managing a Cemetery. We just don’t know how long we will have these additional resources to help us.

The committee:
– Liane Rockstad President
– Darlan Fatland, Previous Sexton/Historian
– Greg Oestreich helps with new plot management/sales
– Shelly Swandal has past administrative assistant expertise due to having worked at NDSU for several years
– Nina Stone served in the National Guard, Veteran and a member of the Legion Auxiliary
– Myself as Treasurer

A combination of very generous families, individuals and area businesses, and also both the cemetery and the Veteran’s Memorial has received very generous memorials. So many supporters that I fear I may forget to give credit or recognition. 

This will be our third year of being a non-profit charity participating in Giving Hearts Day.  This year our sponsors are the Horace Lions Club and Master Chief Petty Officer Mark Helling USN-Ret from River Falls Wisconsin.  Mark heard about our initiative through the Hallinglag Newletter.  (The Hallinglag was formed in Walcott back in 1907 and held conventions/reunions in Walcott in 1937, 1957, 1982, and in Moorhead in 2007 and is still active today. The Hallinglag originally formed to maintain Norwegian traditions and lifestyle in the new world.)  Our previous GHD sponsors included: Jon Reiger Pioneer Seeds, J J Calibrations, Lianne Rockstad from AB Farm Art, Roger Jordheim Retired Vietnam Veteran. 

We have also been a recipient of donations from the Cass County Round-up, Ottertail Foundation, area VFW’s, Polar Communications, Cargill Cares, Richland Wilkin Community Funds, the Walcott Legion Post 166, Boulger Funeral Home, Waste Management, Red River Railroad, Industrial Builders, Pro-Landscape to name a few. 

We are working with the Michael Welle of the Fergus Falls Monument Company.  Both Michael and his brother are Veterans and have worked on many Veteran’s Memorials in the region.  We envision the memorial to be 36′ x 36′ cement base with black shiny granite memorials listing the names of ~ 150 Veterans buried in 7 northern Richland County Cemeteries.  The black granite will come from India and takes about 6 months to arrive to the states.  We will have a monument which will hold the emblem of the 6 branches of service.  Also, we will also have a monument dedicated to the Legion Auxiliary members which will be a unique feature of our memorial – giving recognition to the individuals who stayed back home, prayed for their loved ones and managed the family business while their loved ones served our county. There will be a monument with the map of Richland County depicting the location of the 7 cemeteries. Also – three flag poles with solar lighting for the, US Flag, ND Flag and a MIA Flag.  We are planning on a minimum of 4 benches – possibly 6 benches that a family can sponsor and put their Veteran or Family name on. 

It has been the most rewarding project I have ever worked on in my life.  There has only been support and no objections to our efforts. I have learned to not be afraid to ask for help, either in volunteer labor or for a donation.  If you never ask you will never know the answer.  When you ask you are allowing that individual the option to participate. They may not be able to participate now but hope to in the future. 

I hope you enjoy last week’s North Dakota Today segment, which you can watch by clicking the image below. Have a happy week!