On Aug. 21, 2021, my sister and I visited the Gunnison Cemetery to place flowers on our parent’s graves. The grass was green because the sprinklers were going as fast as possible and as far as they could spray. The ground was wet and muddy; grass was so tall it was very difficult to walk to graves. Looking around it appeared that nothing had been done in the cemetery except watering since Memorial Day, 2021.
Luckily, we had brought some hand trimmers and tried to trim the foot tall edging grass around headstones including the clover and huge dandelions. This was impossible due to height and thickness of the weeds, mud and water and we had to resort to our hands to pull that we could. We did not take a shovel with us as one of us came from St George and the other from Ephraim.
We became very angry, frustrated and horrified at the condition of the cemetery, not just our parents graves, but the entire cemetery.
We feel the cemetery is a place to honor our dead family members and friends and those in the military to make our lives better. The appearance of the cemetery did none of that.
Our father was buried on Feb. 1, 2017 and his grave still has an uncovered hole, is terribly uneven and is full of weeds even though we have asked both the people at the city office and the workers at the cemetery to correct this problem more than a half a dozen times.
Gunnison City Council members and Gunnison people; what is the next step to resolve the problem?
Remember we will all end up in this cemetery one day!
Vicky Lynn Pickett – Hurricane, Utah
and Paula Ann Stevens
