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Cemetery sexton reflects on 35 years of service
For more than 35 years, Steven Roberts was entrusted to care for a unique garden in Mountain Home. Enclosed by an iron fence that designates its boundaries, it includes plenty of shade trees and flowers.
But it's the 9,000 individual blocks of marble that make this garden so unique. Arranged in neat, orderly lines stretching as far as the eye can see, each one bears the name of a loved one that has died.
When asked, Roberts can recite the name of nearly every person that was laid to rest in his garden -- a garden made of stone known as Mountain View Cemetery. Many times, he was the one who performed this final honor -- a sacred duty he's done countless times.
But that call to duty came to end last Friday. During his retirement ceremony, he said farewell to those he had worked with for nearly a third of a century during a retirement ceremony.
A soft-spoken man reluctant to stand in the spotlight, his career as caretaker of Mountain View Cemetery actually started by accident -- literally. In 1978, he started work with the city's sanitation department before he was sidelined by a back injury.
In March 1980, he started work at the city cemetery, which at the time was part of the city's street department. Over the next eight years, Roberts learned every facet associated with the cemetery from former sexton Earl Hale.
In 1988, Hale retired as the cemetery caretaker, transferring those duties over to Roberts.
Since then, he made it his duty to ensure everything inside that fenced area was fixed either by himself or a member of his crew. It took a special circumstance or complicated repair to prompt him to bring in outside help.
"Anything that was inside the perimeter of the cemetery I took care of it all," he said. "I had everything: Roads, buildings, grounds, sprinklers. It was all mine."
Responsible for burying those that have died, he's not afraid to admit that he's had to deal with his own share of sadness over the years.
"The first grave I ever buried was for a baby," he said. "That one hit me really hard because I had a daughter dealing with all kinds of heart issues."
Over the past 35 years, he's seen many of his old friends and acquaintances die and laid to rest in his cemetery. Among them was one of his co-workers that died from spinal meningitis.
"That was really tough," he said. "I personally buried him because it was my due respect for him, and I know he would've done the same thing for me."
But there are two places in Mountain View Cemetery that for Roberts have the most meaning. The first is the grave site of his daughter, who died in May 1990. The second is the final resting place of his father-in-law.
Looking back over a career stretching for more than a third of a century, he's seen Mountain View Cemetery grow to more than twice its original size. In fact, the area to the south of its main gate was just an empty lot when he started there. Today, it's filled with grave stones.
"I helped establish that field," he said. That meant having to install all the sod, street curbs along with all the sprinkler lines that nurture the lawn and keeps everything green.
In addition to a sacred duty, Roberts considers his role as a sexton as a source of personal pride and commitment.
"I'd bet that within a 500-mile radius, you won't find one that looks better than ours," he said. "I guarantee it."
It's not bragging, he added. It's a matter of knowing what cemeteries are supposed to look like and ensuring that the one here meets or exceeds those standards.
That's one of the reasons why he helped create the cemetery's directory with the help of fellow employee Kenny Patterson.
"We always talked about it," Roberts said regarding the directory. "We would go to other cemeteries that had one, and we didn't have one."
Geared specifically for those visiting the cemetery, it contains the names of everyone that is buried there and where they were laid to rest. However, it's not something that Roberts has to use regularly. He knows where nearly everyone is located.
"If I buried them, I know where they're at," he said. Rarely does he need to refer to the directory for a memory jogger.
Several grave stones date back nearly 200 years -- nearly a century before the cemetery was officially established.
The oldest grave site that Roberts was able to identify dates back to 1828, he claims, although he said it lacks an official stone marker. Another of the cemetery's oldest sites bears the name of Robbie Porter, who died in 1878.
Roberts also knows the final resting places of many Civil War veterans. When one of their names caught his attention, he would go online to see if these fallen soldiers had anything written about them.
"There's a lot of history in that cemetery," he said.
While Roberts focused much of his work inside the cemetery grounds, he spent a considerable amount of time leading a number of beautification efforts across the city. He remains particularly proud of all the work he invested at Legacy Park. In addition to digging the ponds and installing the rocks surrounding them, he build the stream bed and all the pathways.
Looking to the future of Mountain View Cemetery, Roberts remains confident that these hallowed grounds will have enough room for another 50 to 100 years before the city would need to expand.
The reason? More families are choosing to cremate the remains of their loved ones versus traditional burials.
"The times have really changed because everybody's starting to cremate," he said. "In 1980, everybody was buried. You might have had one cremation out of 20. Now it's about eight out of 10 that are cremated."
While he understands that some people may have some negative thoughts associated with this line of work, Roberts understands the importance of performing this duty.
In fact, he always vowed that he would resign if he wasn't able to perform his duties to the best of his ability.
Finally content to retire after so many years, he had just a few words to sum up a career that spanned so many years.
"It's been an experience," he said.