Group seeks to expand cemetery
By Steve Herring
Published in News on March 24, 2016 2:19 PM
The Friends of Willowdale group is working with the city of Goldsboro to acquire an additional 15 acres for the historic Willowdale Cemetery that dates back to the 1800s.
Just as importantly, the group wants to ensure that needed repairs and maintenance, by both the city and the families of those buried there, is done in order to make the cemetery cleaner and more attractive and to protect its historical importance.
Another need that could be a future project is naming the cemetery streets and possibly adding walking trails or even parking.
Some of the land adjoining the cemetery has been acquired, but negotiations are continuing for other tracts, including a former industrial site.
However, Friends of Willowdale member Charles S. Norwood Jr. Wednesday night said he could not comment on specifics because of those negotiations.
LKC Engineering and Landscape Architecture of Aberdeen has prepared a conceptual master plan for the cemetery that Norwood presented to the group during a Wednesday night meeting at the Wayne County Museum.
But like the property acquisition, Norwood said he was limited in what he could say about the plan that has yet to be approved by the city.
The city owns the cemetery and Friends of Willowdale members are local residents who have an interest in it, he said.
As such, it is important that the group keep the City Council informed, especially since the majority of the board changed during last year's election, Norwood said.
Mayor Chuck Allen was among the nearly 30 people who attended the meeting at the Wayne County Museum.
For all practical purposes all of the cemetery's "good lots" are gone after 100 years, Norwood said. It remains to be determined how many additional gravesites could be added if all 15 acres are acquired, he said.
"This day and time you don't go by how many lots because you have columbariums (for urns holding a deceased's cremated remains)," he said. "The national ratio now is close to 50 percent of cremations as to normal interments.
"That means if you have good land you can do a whole more. You don't need as much open real estate as you did before which means you have more of this other type space for walking trails, beautification, parking and all those kinds of things."
Norwood enphasized the importance of beautification and maintenance of the cemetery.
That is the responsibility of the city, which needs to budget more for that work, and the stakeholders, he said.
"We know that maintenance in the past is not what it should be, on both sides," he said. "There is a lot of deferred maintenance down there that is not the city's responsibility. There is a lot down there that is.
"I think the objective is to take a look at all of this and see whose responsibility it is and what we can do. We can start with everybody taking care of their own lot -- the deferred maintenance."
Norwood cautioned that families would be wise to use a professional so as not to damage tombstones.
The effort to acquire the land and make the improvements has been more than three years in the making, Norwood said.
"It just takes time. It just takes time," he said. "It is slow, but we are making progress."
Willowdale was designed in 1853 by Col. Charles Nelson.
Perhaps one of its most notable features is a Confederate monument erected in 1883 over the mass grave of 800 Civil War soldiers.
It is also home of gravesites of several famous and historic figures including Gov. Curtis Hooks Brogden (1816-1901), professional baseball player and manager Clyde King (1925-2010), and Kenneth Royall (1894-1971) the first secretary of the Army and the last secretary of war under President Harry S. Truman.
The cemetery's large Jewish section includes the grave of Gertrude Weil, women's rights activist and founder of the North Carolina League of Women Voters.