Graver's Journal

Shanna Riley January 19th, 2011

The J.S. Clark Cemetery had its first burial in the late 1950s and eventually grew into a 10-acre burial ground in southern Ouachita Parish.  Sadly, as happens to many older graveyards, it fell into disuse and disrepair over the years and as its original owners passed on.

The cemetery was eventually acquired by the Ouachita Parish Police Jury, who – with the concerted efforts of District D Police Juror Dr. Ollibeth Reddix – has been working on its rehabilitation.  Last year the Police Jury set aside $108,000 to put towards improvements to Clark Cemetery.

Along with appearance, the plan was to work on drainage control.  To do so, they needed to learn more about what was below the ground.  It was known – through the cemetery records – that many more people had been buried in Clark Cemetery than visible headstones showed.  Exactly where, however, was not so easily determined.

Working under consulting engineer, Tom Holtzcraw's, plan, $21,000 of those funds were used to hire an Ohio company, Ground Penetrating Radar Services to help them find unmarked graves so they could move forward in devising a drainage system and plotting possible further expansion.

On January 10, the company began its work, starting with a 6-acre area of the grounds using the radar cart and GPS coordinates to find and mark the long-lost graves.

It was no surprise to the crew or the Police Jury that missing graves were found, but everyone was a bit taken aback to realize that 200 unmarked graves lay beneath the leaf-strewn ground.

At this time, water-filled ditches are prohibiting some of the work and more ground needs to be covered.  There is no telling how many graves will be "unearthed" through this project, but the Police Jury and especially Dr. Reddix should be applauded for their efforts to preserve a piece of Ouachita Parish's past and honor its past residents by making sure they are never again forgotten.

Tags: burial, Cemetery, clark cemetery, dr. ollibeth reddix, graveyard, j.s. clark cemetery, lost graves, louisiana cemetery, ollibeth reddix, ouachita, ouachita parish, ouachita parish police jury, sepulcher, tom holtzcraw, unmarked graves

• Cemetery Preservation
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Shanna Riley March 23rd, 2010

I do not know exactly what I was expecting from 80 year-old June Nadle's memoirs about her decades in the funeral business, Mortician Diaries:The Dead-Honest Truth from a Life Spent with Death, but I was charmed to find her a tender yet strong, sensible, and introspective woman who - rather than be made cynical by her daily dances with death or seeing human tragedy (like the death of young people or babies) constantly - used her experiences to make her a more compassionate, life-affirming person. I finished this book wanting to meet June Nadle and have her over for tea. She is simply an intelligent, strong, and endearing woman that you feel privileged to have met as you turn the last page of her memoir.

She has managed to write about what some would consider an - at best, undesirable, and to most, a disturbing - job in a beautiful, uplifting way. There is little that is dismal in this book; quite a profound statement for a work that is almost exclusively about death and dying. Even when Nadle is retelling the most tragic stories, she always finds and shares a silver lining or muses that, at the very least, we must remember never to take life for granted; indeed, she reminds us that life is a beautiful, precious, fleeting thing.

In this way, June Nadle's treatise on working as an undertaker was, surprisingly, much more an affirmation of life than a narrative on death.

Tags: book review, Cemetery, coffin, coffins, death, death and dying, dying, funeral, funeral director, funeral home, funeral parlor, funerals, grandmother undertaker, graveside service, gravesite, june nadle, mortician, mortician diaries, taphophile, undertaker, wake

• Taphophile Book Review
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