Cemetery board faces grave situation
4:54 p.m. Friday, August 22, 2008
"We have confirmed about 1,300 Civil War veterans, including a couple three Confederates," laughs cemetery superintendent Lowell Manis.
He has watched over the Topeka Cemetery for 38 years. He says there is so much history in the more than 30,000 gravesites in the cemetery.
"We have 22 mayors of Topeka buried here. We have several governors," says Manis.
You will also see familiar names like Huntoon and Gage on the markers. And it is the final resting place of former vice president Charles Curtis who served under President Herbert Hoover and died in 1936.
But Manis says the cost of preserving Topeka history is going up. Right now, the Topeka Cemetery board has asked the city for $100,000. The City has a proposed $20,000 cut. And Board president Chris Hutton says, if the city cuts the budget, members of the board just might quit.
"Now is it a possibility that the board might be looking at as saying, 'Hey we can't do this. We're just going to walk away?' I would say it would be very strong possibility," Hutton said.
Hutton says if the board does walk away, the city would have to take over the operation of the cemetery. That could cost about $270,000 each year. By trying to save $20,000, the city could end up spending a lot more. The board threatened to do that once before, three years ago.
Manis doesn't worry so much about his job but the preservation of history.
"It frightens me to think that people may come in here that doesn't know or doesn't care about the history in this place or the past," says Manis
The Cemetery Board will have its next board meeting on September 16. There, a decision will be made about what the Topeka Cemetery Association's next move will be.
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