The Cemetery Lady

Cemeteries, a part of our History
I met Earlene Lyle several years ago when I became interested in the Minden Cemetery. I, too, am always drawn to anything old and history related. I once went to a meeting where I was to represent several organizations in Minden: The Residential Historic District, the Minden Cemetery Association, the Coca-Cola Museum and the St Jude Car Show. When I stood up, I told them my name and said if it is old, rusty, won’t crank, falling down or buried, I am here to represent it and speak about it. That comment got a good laugh from all who attended. My mission has always been the same. I am very much interested in preserving our past. I am a firm believer that if a town or city doesn’t preserve its past then they cannot have any kind of decent future to build on.
When you meet someone like Earlene Lyle, you realize how committed some folks are in helping others. Many people believe that you should let the dead rest in peace. I believe that there is too much history in the cemetery to forget about it as a historic landmark. Cemeteries around the country hold our founding fathers and mothers. People should not be forgotten, and, to me, an unkempt grave is a sin. Just because someone’s family is gone, should those people not be paid the respect to take care of their final resting place? I think it is everyone’s responsibility. I will never be buried in Webster Parish, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t help preserve an important piece of history.
I would like to make a personal plea to all of you reading this story. If you have a loved one buried in an older cemetery or a church cemetery, PLEASE give to the upkeep fund. It costs a huge amount of money to keep a cemetery up and in good shape. Many cemeteries around the world have fallen into a state of disgrace because people stopped giving because they did not feel it was their responsibility. It is all of our responsibility! Repairs need to be made, fences mended, and expensive ant and weed killer spread in sometimes large areas. The mowing alone is a huge undertaking because of trimming around stones and markers. If you would like to give to the Minden Cemetery Association fund, please contact me, Schelley Brown, at 318-423-0192.
This is a poem that I found several years ago that sums up how I believe that you should feel about your ancestors when you visit their grave sites.
Dear Ancestor
Your tombstone stands among the rest, neglected and alone.
The name and date are chiseled out on polished, marble stone.
It reaches out to all who care.
It is too late to mourn.
You did not know that I exist, you died and I was born,
yet each of us are cells of you in flesh, in blood, in bone.
One blood contracts and beats a pulse entirely not our own.
Dear ancestor, the place you filled one hundred years ago
Spreads out among the ones you left who would have loved you so.
I wonder if you lived and loved. I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot, and come to visit you.
Author Unknown
Earlene’s cemetery book has been a life saver for me during the Cemetery Tours. If not for this book, I would spend countless hours trying to locate certain graves. The following story is how Earlene came to be called “the cemetery lady”.
THE CEMETERY LADY

By Earlene Mendenhall Lyle


“Hey, Bob….. the cemetery lady’s here.” These are the first words I hear whenever I visit the local funeral home.

Of all the titles I’ve had during the last 50+ years, this is one to which I’d never aspired, and, certainly, it had never occurred to me that the description would ever be appropriate! I must admit, though, that I’ve spent many hours in the Minden cemeteries during the last 10 years. Why, you ask? Well, let me try to justify this seemingly macabre interest in cemeteries.

Years ago, I developed an interest in genealogy and began interviewing some of our oldest family members and recording the information given to me. Until then, I never had a clue that anyone in our family came from anywhere other than Louisiana and Arkansas. Because most relatives remembered only that a favorite aunt or uncle died ‘the summer of 1949’, I began visiting family cemeteries and recording the information found on tombstones.

In mid-1995, I was working in Atlanta, GA, when my daddy was diagnosed with cancer, and I began making bi-weekly trips from Atlanta to Minden to be with him as much as possible. During one of those weekend trips, I drove around Minden and just happened to drive past the Minden Cemetery. Loving the history found on old stones, I stopped and strolled through the oldest section, recording some of the names and dates on the old stones. Although I had no plans to do anything with that information, I filed it away “just in case”. Daddy passed away in December 1995 and was buried in Gardens of Memory Cemetery.

In 2001, after several years of Alzheimer’s, my mother died and was buried in Gardens of Memory, also. I had come to Minden for a visit and was staying with my sister, Barbara, when we got the news. After the funeral, I remained in Minden with Barbara while my family returned to Alabama. That afternoon, I got ‘antsy’ and just had to get out of the house so I drove back to the cemetery. After visiting my parents’ graves, I started walking around and looking at the names of others buried nearby. I found so many family friends that I grabbed a pad and pencil and began recording the information on many of the stones.

Returning to Barbara’s home, I told her she needed to help me record the names of everyone buried in that cemetery. At first, she told me ‘No’, in no uncertain terms. Later, though, she agreed to go with me for just a little while. Like me, she found so many family friends that she became very interested in recording their information. Quite often that afternoon, I’d hear, “Earlene, come over here; look who I’ve found!” After I had to return to Alabama, she was the one who recorded the greater part of that cemetery. When I questioned some of the recorded data, she was the one who stopped by the cemetery to verify that data.

A couple of years ago, being without an ongoing project, I ran across the Minden Cemetery notes I’d made in 1995 and decided to return to Minden and record every burial in The Minden Cemetery. This time, Barbara told me she was not going to help with that one. Well, she ‘stuck to her guns’ about working in the cemetery, but she would come by and tell me she was cooking dinner for me and Bob. This was always great news, knowing we were going to have a good dinner waiting for us!

After recording all of the burials in Gardens of Memory Cemetery, Barbara and I published the book, Transcriptions from the Gardens of Memory Cemetery in 2003. In 2004, after months of walking, writing, sunburn, and ant bites, The Minden Cemetery was published.

The Minden library has copies of both books in their Reference section, and I have a limited supply on hand at this time. If you would like a copy of the books, you can contact Earlene in Minden at 318-377-9596, via e-mail at mailto:iluvoldcars@yahoo.com, or by snail mail to Earlene Lyle, 6225 Bell Creek Ct., Grand Bay, AL or 1301 Broadway St., Minden, LA 71055.