Daily Herald opinion: A twofold mission: Historic cemeteries deserve to be both preserved and visited

We’ve all seen them at one time or another. Fields of faded limestone headstones tottering awkwardly under tangles of vines or flattened beneath years of accumulated bracken and dirt, with barely recognizable names and dates fading on the surface.

And we’ve wondered: Who is buried here? Does no one care anymore? Is this really a respectful remembrance? It seems such a sad commentary on lives that once had vitality and meaning.

Now, something is being done about such settings. The Illinois Cemetery Relief Grant Program is providing grants to help clean, restore and maintain aging or forgotten cemeteries. In a report Monday, our Dave Oberhelman described two local entities — Milton and Palatine townships — that have received the maximum $20,000 allocation for projects in need of upgrading.

This is important work that honors the humanity of the settlers whose toils laid the foundations on which our suburban communities have been built. But it is also meaningful work with the potential to deepen our awareness of those toils and inspire our own contributions to the growth and prosperity of our communities today.

As Milton Township Supervisor Elizabeth “Buffy” Higgins-Beard said in a release from the state cemetery fund, “How a community remembers its pioneers and founders says a lot about its character. We hope the community enjoys and can learn some of the history from this area due to our renewed efforts.”

The township’s Cemeteries Authority targeted the 1840s-era Jewell Grove Cemetery for tree trimming and planting, weed removal and headstone repairs or replacements. Among the particularly notable individuals interred there are a namesake — Emily Jewell, the first white woman buried in the township —, and members of the Proctor Price Cooley family, who paid for the bodies of 20 Civil War veterans to be brought there whose families lacked the means to do it.

“I’m always aware as a female supervisor and the first in the role in 176 years, the women that joined these men and set up homes and businesses and set up small communities are just as remarkable, and their stories are often less told,” Higgins-Beard said.

The grant will help clean and repair headstones in four inactive cemeteries in Palatine, including the long-neglected Wolfrum Cemetery which was discovered in 1975 by crews laying a sewer line for a new subdivision.

All these projects honor the legacies of prior generations. But they deserve not just to be restored but to be visited. For they also preserve important, engaging stories that can both fire the imagination about this place we call home and encourage us to write our own stories in the evolution of its future.