New trees beautify cemetery

Billy Egly, left, cemetery sexton for the City of Fulton, and Randy Gleeson, a cemetery maintenance worker, just finished planting 25 new trees at Hillcrest Cemetery. The trees replace several that died over recent years.
Billy Egly, left, cemetery sexton for the City of Fulton, and Randy Gleeson, a cemetery maintenance worker, just finished planting 25 new trees at Hillcrest Cemetery. The trees replace several that died over recent years.

There are 25 little patches of disturbed earth scattered across Hillcrest Cemetery.

It's not for any spooky, Halloween-related reason thankfully. It's the result of three days of hard work by Fulton's cemetery maintenance department. On Tuesday, they finished planting 25 young oak trees.

"We lost a whole bunch of trees from the 2007 ice storm," said Billy Egly, Fulton's cemetery sexton. "Not all at once, but they died over the years from the broken branches and disease."

Many of the trees that died were old and grand. Egly added, Hillcrest was the only local cemetery severely impacted by the ice storm.

The lack of trees at the cemetery was a disappointment for some families planning to bury their loved ones there, said Jeremy Polston, Fulton's building and grounds supervisor.

"Everyone wants to place their loved ones near a tree," he said.

Replacing trees can get expensive, Polston said. That's why the city was excited to find out about a grant program by Forest ReLeaf of Missouri, a nonprofit tree nursery that has planted more than 150,000 trees since its founding in 1993, according to ReLeaf's website. The city applied for the grant and within days was approved to receive 25 little oaks in in 3-gallon pots.

"We just have to keep them mulched, pruned and watered," Polston said.

The trees might be little more than twigs now, but with time and care, they should grow to be as mighty as their predecessors.

"I think it's going to add a lot of beauty to our cemetery," Polston said.