For many people, cemeteries are a place they lay their loved ones to rest. They may visit them from time to time, but the cemetery is always there, with new burials needing to be arranged and grounds to be maintained.
The City of Lubbock Cemetery is municipally run as part of the Parks and Recreation Department.
Before the city took over in 1948, the land was made up of multiple different cemeteries and the grounds were separated by race, religion, and economic status. On paper, the cemetery was integrated after the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but de facto segregation continued for years. The city cemetery has faced lawsuits as recently as the early 2000s over alleged neglect in its record-keeping of Black and Latino burial sites.
Helen Washington, the operations manager, has been with the cemetery since 2011. She came into cemetery work from the municipal side. She was a City of Lubbock employee for several years, but her department was being dissolved.
“I had started trying to look for something else, and there was a job here at the cemetery, which I didn't even notice because I wasn't looking to work at the cemetery,” she laughed.
She said working at the cemetery took some adjustment, and some people still don’t understand how she does it.
“After getting out here and seeing what it was all about, it's really interesting,” Washington explained. “I'm kind of a detailed person. So like how the graves are laid out, and keeping track of all that.”
The history of the cemetery also appeals to Washington, and many others. The cemetery has been the subject of walking tours, historical research, and published books.
The cemetery’s first burial was in 1892: Henry Jenkins, known affectionately as “Cowboy Jenkins.”
According to newspapers and historical records, Jenkins was from Cochran County. He was staying at the Nicolett Hotel where he died of pneumonia.
Jenkins’ grave is one of several that is marked on the cemetery map, along with Buddy Holly, Mac Davis, and other famous West Texans. The map also marks a Confederate Monument standing near the front of the cemetery, which has been the target of vandalism as well as dedicated historic preservation. Statues are noted, like the Umlauf Angel and one of Lubbock artist Vivian T. Cooke, memorialized in a historically Black section of the cemetery where babies were buried when their parents could not afford a marker or headstone.
When someone is looking for a grave, cemetery staff can check the burial records, kept in a fireproof room called “the vault,” where the cemetery also has a reference book put together by the South Plains Genealogical Society, cataloging all the marked graves from 1892-2002.
When it comes to actually locating those graves on the grounds, Washington said sometimes finding older graves requires the use of a metal detector because years of weathering has covered the markers with dirt.
Washington said there are also community members who come and contribute photos to websites like Find a Grave, so that folks can find burials even if they can’t visit the cemetery in person.
Lubbock Cemetery is 132 acres. The city website says there are more than 60,000 burials on the grounds, Washington said that’s the estimate she heard when she was brought on in 2011.
Her team handles about 350-400 burials in a year, meaning an additional 4,900 to 5,600 burials in her time with the cemetery, all handled by her grounds crew.
The cemetery team includes Washington as operations manager, four crew members, and one office worker.
Along with helping folks find their loved ones on the grounds – and helping international tourists find Buddy Holly’s grave – office staff are the intake point for services. They are contacted by funeral homes or by the families to make burial arrangements. Those who don’t own property are invited to purchase land or a spot in the mausoleum. That information is then passed to the grounds crew for casket and urn burials.
“They go out and find it on the grounds. Then they come back and get us, and we verify to make sure that everything's where it's supposed to be and that people are buried in the right place. And then they dig,” Washington said. “For a casket burial, they use a backhoe to dig. If it's a cremation, they do shovel by hand.”
As well as supervising the cemetery staff, Washington herself works with families for scheduling service and buying their plot.
The process typically starts with staff asking if there are other family members at the cemetery that they want the plot to be close to. She said some families want to see what’s available and selected based on the map, others want to go out onto the grounds and see the property for themselves.
The cemetery also sells property pre-need for those making arrangements before they or their loved one dies.
Payment can be made upfront or through a payment plan. A casket plot and burial at the Lubbock Cemetery is typically $850 or $950. That cost is for burial alone, there are additional costs for graveside services and other fees for setting monuments and headstones or installing mausoleum markers.
The cemetery does not handle mortuary work, like selling caskets, arranging viewings, or care like embalming or cremation.
According to the consumer advocate website Funeralocity, the average cost of an “affordable burial” in Texas is more than $5,000, with a basic casket being $2,500.
A casket is required for non-cremation burial at the Lubbock Cemetery, as is the minimum of a concrete vault surrounding it.
Washington said the vaults help keep prairie dogs out of the graves.
“Prairie dogs can dig pretty much through about anything,” she said.
In addition to maintenance, burial, and prairie dogs disposal, the grounds crew is responsible for filling in cave-ins of gravesites.
“We've gotten a lot of rain this year, sometimes they collapse, and that can cause some of the headstones to fall over, and the ground gets uneven,” Washington said. “As we're going through the cemetery, if we see that, we don't wait for the family to come out and take care of that.”
For the most part though, families are responsible for upkeep: tending to their plot, cleaning headstones, and placing flowers or other decorations.
Occasionally, the cemetery has to exhume burial sites to relocate someone, especially if the family wants them closer to loved ones buried in other areas.
With the West Texas State Veterans Cemetery set to open in Lubbock in December, the marker for Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Colonel George Davis will be taken down at the city cemetery and a new one will be put up at the state veterans cemetery.
Currently, Washington is dealing with a first. Someone left an urn on the office porch, on it was a sticky note with a year, name, and rank, explaining that it was found during an estate sale. She has been doing research trying to find out who it is and where to bury it.
While this is her first doorstep drop-off, she has had families mail urns without finalizing any arrangements. Sometimes, Washington said, people pass away while arranging a loved one’s burial, and it gets passed onto another family member.
A few months after entering her supervisory role, Washington dealt with a different first. She had someone die on the cemetery grounds while visiting. A few months later it happened again, a widower tending to his wife’s grave.
“They died on the same day,” she recalled. “We went and looked at the headstone and saw that that's what he was coming to do. Was to, I think, put flowers.”
She said you notice those types of things on headstones too, when you start paying attention: “Different years, but same day.”
Washington herself has family in the cemetery and she will occasionally go to visit them.
“When I came out here in June of 2011, my mom passed away in September that same year,” she said. “It allowed me to be closer, because I grew up here in East Lubbock, and she lived not far from here. I was going every day at lunch and having lunch with her and stuff. So I got those last few months to spend a lot more time with her. And then, now she's here.”
Washington and her sisters selected a property and her coworker at the time handled the paperwork.
When it comes to working with families, helping them through a difficult period and a difficult process, Washington said she lets them take the lead. Often people are sad, sometimes they cry, but that’s not always the case.
“One time this family was saying, ‘You remember that song they used to sing?’ So they started singing,” Washington said the family laughed and joked as they remembered their loved one.
Despite the difficult parts of her job, and the strange parts – like paranormal investigators asking to stay in the cemetery overnight – she enjoys it.
“I've learned to deal with death since coming here,” Washington said. “And I didn't have that good of a grip on it before I came here.”
The cemetery isn’t still, it isn’t solemnly silent. On any given visit, guests may hear trains pass, birds sing, windchimes ring. They may see trees, flowers, statues, and ornaments, and other visitors, paying their respects. And they may see one from Washington’s team, making sure this place for history and the memory of loved ones is taken care of.