Adam Amato Emerald
Unkempt headstones fill the eerie Masonic Cemetery, Eugene’s oldest graveyard, located at 25th Avenue and University Street.
braveyards
continued from page 1C
Some of these graves have birth
dates with no death dates, and the
mystery of the missing dates
makes them chilling. One such
marker is a flat grave in the chil
dren’s cluster dated Sept. 20,1976,
without a date of death. It was put
in only 25 years ago, and I pon
dered whether the grave belonged
to a baby who wasn’t expected to
live and did, or whether the fami
ly moved away and forgot to mark
the death.
The Masonic Cemetery is Eu
gene’s oldest graveyard. Estab
lished in 1859, it is located at
25th Avenue and University
Street in a nice residential area
and takes up ten acres of hillside.
This is a typical scary-looking
cemetery, with grave sites spot
ting the hillside, some overgrown
with ivy, grass and weeds. As I
walked down the gravel and bark
dust-paved paths on a rainy
evening, every sound made my
heart skip a beat as I looked
around to see if there was really
anyone there.
But Eugene resident Betty Taylor
enjoys the cemetery and said it is a
great place to walk her dog, Toby.
“I love cemeteries,” Taylor said.
“I think they are peaceful places,
and they are a great place to take
my dog for a walk. Whenever I go
on bike rides in the country, I al
ways look for cemeteries to have
lunch in.”
Taylor also said she used to hang
out and read books in cemeteries
as a child.
The Masonic Cemetery holds
quite a bit of Eugene history. Eu
gene Skinner, the city’s namesake,
and his wife, their children and
her second husband are all buried
toward the top of the hill near the
massive cement mausoleum of
Oregon’s first governor, John
Whiteker, and the University’s first
president, John Wesley Johnson.
As I explored the cemetery, I saw a
number of names that adorn Uni
versity buildings as well.
According to Taylor, there is a
family plot in the cemetery where
a mother and all her children are
buried following their drowning
while crossing the Willamette Riv
er. The father was the only sur
vivor. At another plot rest a fami
ly’s five children who died from
diphtheria.
But unlike the Masonic Ceme
tery, some graveyards are almost
welcoming.
Rest-Haven Memorial Park and
Funeral Home is laid out to create
a more park-like atmosphere. In
1921, the founder wanted the
cemetery designed after a memo
rial park from the East Coast, said
Karen West Burford, a funeral
service practitioner at the ceme
tery.
The grounds are well-groomed,
with flat markers and bright red
colored conifers. The pretty setting
almost misled me into thinking the
graveyard was a place to play
catch rather than reflect on life.
“When you first see it, it looks
like a golf course,” Eugene resident
Arron Boham said. “Cemeteries
are not supposed to be inviting, as
this one is. It is kind of eerie to me
this is so nice.”
Burford said graves and urns
serve to represent how the person
lived his or her life while they
were still alive. Some grave mark
ers have a multitude of sayings on
them. One of Burford’s favorites is:
“I told you I was sick,” from a per
son who lived to be quite old de
spite being perpetually ill. Anoth
er was for a person who spent his
time clipping coupons; on his
headstone says, “My coupon ex
pired.”
The only time I felt uneasy in
the memorial park was when I
went in the mausoleum. As I en
tered the building, I saw doors lin
ing the walls that open to reveal
spaces for caskets — which means
the walls are partly made up of
corpses. There are three such halls
full of bodies.
There is also a room lined with
niches, where cremated remains
are placed. There are niches with
glass covers that allowed me to see
the urns. Some are decorated as
bookends with fancy writing, and
others are shaped like beautiful
bottles. Just as there are grave plots
for husbands and wives to rest in
peace together, there are urns for
the same reason. The remains can
be mixed together or they can be
left in their plastic bags and kept
separated, Burford said. Some
niches are marble-covered so the
urns are hidden, but the names
and dates are visible on the doors.
Oak Hill Cemetery is about 19
miles west of Eugene. Near the en
trance of the gate to the cemetery is
the historic graveyard from the lat
er part of the 19th century. At the
top of the hill is the caretaker’s
house, and around back is the
more modern part of the cemetery,
which contains more recent
graves.
In the modern part of the ceme
tery, I found a grave belonging to
a girl named Angle Jewel Stan
difer, who was born in 1978 and
died in a car accident in 1995.
The grave is decorated with a
school picture of Angle flanked
by pine trees. A rose frames the
bottom edge of the picture, and a
horse is in mid-stride on the left
side. The trees, horse, rose and
picture gave me a sense of who
she was, but they also reminded
me that this spot is the resting
place of the dead.
Since cemeteries are a reminder
of death and of people’s own
morality, they can be scary and
aren’t a place to visit for fun.
“People who are not comfortable
with the idea they are going to die
are scared of cemeteries,” Burford
said. “I have accepted the idea that
I am going to die one day and
think that acceptance just comes
with age.”
University sophomore Melanie
Wilson and University junior Car
olyn Snarskis believe the reputa
tion cemeteries have are due to the
media’s portrayal of them.
“I think of vampires and bad
and scary things,” Snarskis said.
“But I think that is just from what I
see on TV, and society impresses
upon us the evil side of cemeter
ies.”
Wilson attributes the scary sto
ries she heard as a child to her fear
about cemeteries. They have a rep
utation for being dark and lonely,
and when Wilson thinks about
them, the first thing that comes to
her mind is the “big tombstone
that reads R.I.P.”
Allyson Taylor is a freelance reporter
for the Oregon Daily Emerald.
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