Preservationists seeking 'angels' to watch over cemeteries

A cemetery can spook some people, making them imagine they’re being watched.

After today’s Cemetery Watch kickoff at the Evergreen Cemetery Chapel, someone will be watching. Or at least that’s what Dianne Hartshorn and Ingrid McDonald are hoping.

The free event begins at 6 p.m. at 1005 S. Hancock Ave.

Hartshorn, the founder and director of the Evergreen Cemetery Benevolent Society, and McDonald, a Colorado Springs police crime prevention officer and society member, have been mulling this scheme for the past year. They hope to quell cemetery vandalism and theft that McDonald said has been on the rise in the past four or five years.

“Some cemeteries have lost over $150,000 in relics,” said McDonald, who will lead a presentation called “Funeraria, the Business and Theft of Cemetery Relics and Monuments” at the kickoff.

“It’s a concern,” she said. “When family members have a marker disturbed and things stolen, it brings out a lot of anxiety.”

McDonald, who works with the Neighborhood Watch program, has been a member of the Benevolent Society since Hartshorn founded it in 2005. Hartshorn said the Society was born to help save decaying headstones and other architectural elements that “give the cemetery its character.”

The group’s goal is to raise awareness so that people visiting grave sites in the city’s two cemeteries, Evergreen and Fairview, will watch for and report suspicious activity and people. Signs will be posted in both cemeteries letting people know who to contact if they see vandalism or theft.

McDonald, Hartshorn and Will DeBoer, the cemeteries’ manager, agree that many of the crimes don’t get reported because people visiting graves simply don’t know who to tell. Everything from brass and copper plaques and urns to silk flowers and stuffed animals left at grave sites come up missing.

“It’s crime of opportunity,” DeBoer said. “People come out and they see something nice. Obviously the dead won’t care, so they just take it.”

McDonald attributes some of the recent thefts to the economy.

She said that even brass stars commemorating The Grand Army of the Republic have been sold on craigslist.com. The veterans organization honors those who fought in the Civil War.

The program also allows people to help maintain the cemeteries. Those interested can sign up for the Adopt-a-Block program. They can choose a family plot or any other size section of the cemeteries to help keep clean.

DeBoer said, regretfully, people seem to have lost “respect for the dead.” He said that the work the Benevolent Society has done in the last five years and the optimism which comes from this new program have a value that can’t be measured.

“They’re angels for the cemetery,” DeBoer said.