Windstorm Damage at Fairmount Memorial Park

November 17, 2015 Spokane had a bad windstorm gusts to 70+ miles an hour and a lot of trees in our area were blown down taking power lines with them and so about 250,000+ people out of power for up to 8 days in cold November. I was lucky as I lost one tree and all it did was bend a part of my fence, but our cemeteries did not do well either. Fairmount Memorial Park where my parents, grandparents and a few other family friends are buried had a lot of trees down, and closed due to the dangerous trees that had broken off or just uprooted some hitting gravestones and leaving a horrible mess to clean up. A couple of weeks ago the loggers had removed all the salvageable timber they opened for the public again.

 

Piles of brush left from the downed trees  

Piles of brush left from the downed trees 

Piles of brush left from the downed trees  Between the front 

two tombstones and back a way slightly to the right is a large 

pine tree stump.

Just to the right out of the photo is my grandparents grave and 

it was not damaged, but it used to be between two large pine

 trees which we always used to find our grandparents grave, 

both are gone.

This is the dirt filling the hole the stump left when one of those

 big pine trees fell over.

There were two gravestones that had been lifted by the falling

pine trees, and Fairmount had promised they will reset them 

when the weather warms up.

Brush pile on road close to my grandparents grave.

The GAR section of the cemetery lost several trees and a few

 of tombstones were damaged. They are supposed to be fixed 

when it warms up.

Looking the other way from the GAR section.

Tree stump in front of the Sunset Mausoleum.

Memorial Day Story

I could not let this day go by without once again sharing with you a story of mine first published in our EWGS Bulletin back in December 2007.

I was walking with my doggers in Fairmount Memorial Park (Spokane) soon after Memorial Day weekend back in 2007 and came upon a handwritten letter that had been placed in a bag and taped to a tombstone. The bagged note was blowing loose and so I picked it up and kept it. The letter read:

"To the Cemetary (sic) Flower Thief ........... I'm writing to tell you, whoever you are, that I don't appreciate having the planter stolen off my husband's grave every year. Also, those from other members of my family. 

"You are about as low as anyone can get---stealing from the dead. Don't you have any conscience at all? We who put flowers on our loved ones graves do it out of love. There is nothing else we can do for them and this is our way of saying, "I love you." Then to have some heartless thief steal them is stooping pretty low. I, and the other families whose plants you steal, don't know who you are, only that you are a selfish, mean thief who probably has a beautiful yard landscaped with our flowers, but God knows you. 

"Last year when I went to pick up my flowers to bring them home and plant them in my own yard as a continuing memorial to my husband, I met another lady from whom you had stolen three planters from her husband's and father's grave. She was heartbroken about it, especially for the one that one of her daughters had bought for her father. The girl had spent much more for it than she could afford but wanted it for her dearly-loved father and had planned to bring it back to him for Father's Day. You have no idea how much pain and anguish you bring to other people by your thievery and I very much doubt that you care.

"One last thing I'll say to you. I hope you will think better of it and not steal our flowers this year. If you do take them, I hope they will bring you nothing but guilt and unhappiness."

True story; I don't have that little note any longer but the Bulletin article included a facsimile of it.