Harding Wolf Pack Brings Life to Laurel Hill Cemetery
The popular image of cemeteries depicts them as somber, even spooky places where love and grief are buried in equal measure. They’re usually quieter than libraries are supposed to be. But not when a busload of middle school kids shows up to help out with the kinds of things that municipal budget cuts don’t allow for.
Despite Tuesday’s funereal weather conditions, as soon as the Harding Middle School Wolf Pack arrived at Laurel Hill, the municipal cemetery just south of the Iowa State Fairgrounds, the mood there changed. They came in two shifts. In the morning the 8th graders policed the grounds, clearing debris dropped on grave sites from the abundant old trees that stand like sentries all over the rolling grounds. The afternoon shift was 7th graders who deployed with clipboards to update Laurel Hill’s records of which sites are marked with footstones and which have headstones, for instance.
Harding’s efforts at Laurel Hill are one of the ways that members of the school’s Wolf Pack pay the community service portion of their membership dues.
Jay Hastings has been a Sexton at the Des Moines municipal cemeteries for almost 20 years and he was very appreciative of the students’ help.
“We have to cover all seven of the city cemeteries,” he explained while a backhoe was positioning behind him to dig the next resting place. “With all the cuts it’s sometimes all we can do to keep up with the most obvious job at a graveyard. The work these kids do here is a big help to us and the people who have loved ones buried here.”
Hastings said that as new sections of the property are occupied it’s standard practice now to keep thorough records not only of a deceased’s location, but also details about the plot. That wasn’t always the case in the oldest blocks of the premises and people often call from faraway places wanting to know if their loved one is buried there and, if so, whether and how their resting place is marked. Updating the records allows those sorts of questions to be answered immediately from the office instead of having to go on patrol and call back.
Beyond fulfillment of their community service requirement and the satisfaction of a good deed done, there may have been an unexpected benefit for the kids who participated in this particular project, according to Hastings.
“Some of them noticed that the markers in the infant section sometimes have only one date on them and they asked about that,” he said. “I told them that’s because those babies were born and died on the same date. I told them life doesn’t come with any minimum guarantee and that things haven’t always been the way they are now with hospitals and medicine. That’s something to think about.”
Harding Vice-Principal Jake Troja says the Wolf Pack will be back at Laurel Hill in November to continue its good work there. It’s a naturally beautiful, spiritual place that really comes alive when noisy teenagers arrive in droves to give a little extra TLC to all the buried treasures. But it would be a mistake to think that they’re the ones doing all the talking.
