By Chris Spangler
Donations of time and money are being sought to help Evergreen Cemetery in the wake of the Friday night storm that ravaged Fort Atkinson.
Between 60 and 70 trees were damaged or felled by straight-line winds reported to have reached as high as 70 to 80 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service in Sullivan.
“Our objective right now is to make the cemetery go back to what it was. We’re going to make it beautiful,” grounds supervisor Raughn Ferrell said Monday. “We’re going to replace the trees. We’re hoping for donations for trees and for cleanup. But it’s not going to happen overnight.”
The storm, which started around 10:30 p.m. Friday, not only blew down branches and trees throughout the area, but left approximately 7,000 Fort Atkinson households and businesses without electricity.
“We had the cemetery looking beautiful when I left here Friday. I’d been trimming bushes. (Head sexton) Neal (Traeder) and I were putting beautiful new mulch around the trees,” Ferrell recalled.
“On Saturday morning, I came to work at 7 o’clock and it looked like a total disaster,” he continued. “We could not get in the front gate. The only way in was in the Robert Street entrance. We looked around and thought, ‘Oh, my God; what has happened?’ It looked like a war zone.”
Ferrell and Traeder toured the cemetery as best they could, finding the easternmost, oldest section having sustained the greatest damage.
“Evergreen got hit the hardest in the whole town,” Ferrell said. “The wind was 80 mph, they say. I myself think it was a tornado; they think it was straight-line winds. I think it came from the north … and just leveled it. You’re talking 200- to 300-year-old trees.”
The trees, which included pines, oaks, maples and cedars, fell on and around graves that date back to the 1863, when Evergreen Cemetery was established.
“We have stones that are tipped over. I don’t know how many, though, because they’re buried (by branches),” Ferrell said, noting that the older headstones are sandstone, which can break easily.
“Any stones that we can save, we will,” he added, saying that P.L. Gehl Memorial Company of Hartford does the cemetery’s stone setting.
However, in many cases, Evergreen Cemetery was fortunate, he pointed out.
“Somebody was watching out for us. A lot of the trees avoided breaking the stone. That one, it went all around it; that’s amazing,” he said, pointing to headstones that narrowly escaped damage.
Traeder said that some stones will have to be reset.
“At one grave by the Hoard stone was a big pine tree that was one of the oldest trees in the cemetery and the tallest,” he said. “That is down. And there is a big marker next to it. The big base is there; the top part stood six or seven feet tall. The top part is lying on the ground. (The winds) took the center part, picked it up and balanced it on the base.”
Just the day before, the cemetery staff had been mulching around trees and starting to build a stone border for landscaping of a new flagpole recently donated by the late Judy Torgerson of Fort Atkinson.
“I had trees up to the (carillon) tower that we just had planted and it just laid them down,” Ferrell said, referring to the storm. “Only one of them broke. The other eight we got restaked and they’re fine. Then we decided to get the roads unblocked.”
As they worked Saturday, some 300 “spectators” visited the cemetery to view the damage, he said. A funeral also was held that day, though it was on the far west end where little to no damage was done.
“We’ve just tried to make it safe for people to get in here. We blocked off where we could see limbs that could fall on somebody. We simply ask that if anybody comes in here, they be very cautious because limbs still could fall,” Ferrell said.
Bring your rakes
On Monday, the staff was seeking volunteers with rakes to pick up leaves, twigs, grave decorations, flowers and other debris strewn throughout the cemetery.
“We can use all the help we can get,” Ferrell said. “People should bring rakes and leave the debris in piles that can be picked up by staff.”
Volunteers must check in at the office at the northwest top of the hill.
“I’d like to clean up the back section first and work my way forward,” Ferrell said.
He noted that on Saturday, many volunteers had shown up with chainsaws, but he had to send them home until he contacted the insurance agency regarding liability.
“In the meantime, we would like people to pick up branches and do some raking and pick up decorations that have blown away and try to help us get the cemetery back to normal,” Ferrell said. “If we can get the small stuff hauled out of here, then we can deal with larger stuff.”
Volunteers may help between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. weekdays.
Donations needed
Time and talent isn’t the only donation needed at Evergreen Cemetery.
Ferrell said he would be meeting with Day Insurance, but was unsure Monday as to how much, if anything, insurance will pay for tree removal or replacement.
“We already have one $60,000 estimate along with $400 for grinding each stump. So you’re talking $1,400 per tree,” he said, noting that he will seek other bids, as well.
Tax-deductible donations may be dropped off at the cemetery office or mailed to Evergreen Cemetery, P.O. Box 218, Fort Atkinson, WI, 53538.
As for damaged headstones, he said he thought those might be covered by families’ insurance, Again, however, he did not know for certain as of Monday.
And he also was contemplating not removing all the damaged trees.
“The sheared-off ones, we’re going to see if we can baby them back. We’ll cut them on the 45 (degree angle) so water runs off of it and then we might carve a totem pole,” Ferrell said.
He noted that a man already took a large chunk of log to carve an eagle for the cemetery. Ferrell will be talking to him about possibly carving a few other trees on the corner.
In the meantime, the priority is cleaning up the cemetery so the lawn can be mowed and the property is ready for funerals.
Ferrell asked that people refrain from sightseeing at the 26-acre cemetery or checking on their family’s grave for the time being.
He gave a shout-out to Scott Nimm of OSI Group (Redi-Serve), who brought ear protection for chain-saw users, and Abendroth Water Conditioning, which has donated bottled water for volunteer workers.
“We greatly appreciate everything everyone is doing for us,” Ferrell concluded.
Four photos above: Graves in Fort Atkinson’s Evergreen Cemetery rest amid tree liter Saturday following Friday night’s storms.
Five photos above: Large trees, described by Evergreen Cemetery Grounds Supervisor Raughn Ferrell, as located within the oldest part of the cemetery, sustain damage. Ferrell said they were sheared off by winds which were reported by the National Weather Service to reach speeds of up to 80 miles per hour. The section of cemetery receiving the most damage is located on the eastern end along North Main Street.
The Evergreen Cemetery cottage, which underwent an interior renovation this past winter, remains untouched by the severe thunderstorm that blew through Fort Atkinson Friday night. The nearby trees and branches avoided hitting the cottage as they fell into the road and nearby grass.
Ardell Wiederhoeft, whose residence backs up to Evergreen Cemetery’s south fence, saws up branches that fell on the fence during Friday’s storm.
Cemetery grounds supervisor Raughn Ferrell, at left, and head sexton Neal Traeder take a break from cleanup. Cases of bottles donated by Abendroth Water Conditioning were on hand to help hydrate workers.
Evergreen Cemetery head sexton Neal Traeder observes several grave monuments that escaped damage in Friday’s storm.
Three photos above: Raughn Ferrell, grounds supervisor at Evergreen Cemetery, accesses damage. He said that although 60 to 70 trees were damaged or blown down in Friday night’s storm, the extent of damage to headstones was not yet known on Monday. He noted numerous instances in which branches fell between or around headstones rather than on them.
Chris Spangler photos.
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