WINFIELD - The new owner of the former J.L. Bowling Cemetery is working diligently to restore its original luster through compassion, community engagement and lots of weed whacking.
Winfield resident Marty Burns, 65, has about a dozen pets buried at the 28-acre cemetery - even her mother is buried there. But when the retired convenience store manager decided with her brother, Mike Frazier, to place a bid on the property in an auction in May, she never dreamed it would win. The cemetery is now known as Heaven's Gateway Memorial Gardens. The once waist-high grass is freshly mowed, the trash has been replaced by new flower bouquets and the faded red office building atop its winding road has been repainted a striking shade of turquoise.
When Burns first learned that her bid of just under $22,000 won the property, she was overwhelmed by its disarray and knew she would need help cleaning it up. "That's when I started calling people I knew and asking people if anybody wanted to help," she said. The response was encouraging as nearly 50 volunteers came throughout the next several weeks donating their money and time to the cemetery's aesthetics.
Since buying the cemetery, Burns said she's had to invest nearly $30,000 into its cleanup, including a tractor, multiple weed eaters and a Terramite backhoe. But the assistance she's gotten from volunteers has helped tremendously.
"They're very special people ... they've mowed, painted, answered phones and more," Burns said. "And some of them are even crazy enough to come back and do it all over again ... they've made this an endeavor of love."
Among those volunteers is Sandy Call, of Hurricane, whose entire extended family is buried at the cemetery. Call said she and others have worried for years about the cemetery's fate. "That was a huge concern of people - somebody coming in and making everybody move their family members and leveling it off."
With about 40,000 plots containing pets and about 1,000 humans, the cleanup hasn't been easy, though it's gaining the attention of community members who are shocked to see its freshly manicured hills from W.Va. 34.
"Once people realized the cemetery had been bought, the community started coming together and donating," Call said.
Burns also hopes to bring in revenue from families with loved ones buried on site through instituting an annual maintenance fee to help offset the cost of upkeep. The fee is $35 for the first plot and $10 for each additional plot. But if customers can't or won't pay up, their loved ones are still safe.
"We're not gonna dig your pet up or not take care of the grounds if you don't pay it; we're just asking," she said.
But she admits it's been difficult to contact families that have bought plots in the past with mountains of paper records and outdated information that spans decades.
In perhaps an even stronger display of empathy, Heaven's Gateway recently donated a grave free of charge for a homeless man who had been kept in a mortuary for months. "They had no place to put him, and we were approached," Burns said. "It feels good to be able to help."
Moving forward, the cemetery's biggest obstacle will be finances, Burns said, particularly because of its troubled financial past. Its previous owner, Hunter Howard, inherited the land from J.L. Bowling, who died in 2009. Howard laid off his staff in 2009 due to financial problems and as of January, owed the federal government unpaid taxes and interest of up to $96,000, according to a previous Gazette-Mail story.
"A bad reputation's hard to overcome; I hope people are gonna find out that it's changed now," Burns said. But for her, Heaven's Gateway isn't a means of getting rich. "It's about taking care of the cemetery and the loved ones. It's something the community needs," she said. "I just hope I don't let them down."
For more information about Heaven's Gateway Memorial Gardens, call 304-757-5860 or find it on Facebook.
Reach Elaina Sauber at elaina.sauber@wvgazette.com, 304-348-3051 or follow @ElainaSauber on Twitter.