I enjoyed the story very much and am interested in the outcome of the study of graves they are doing at Highlandlake cemetery. Pauli Smith has done a great job in getting this done. But an inaccuracy in the story is that Pauli discovered the cemetery 23 years ago. As a member of the Mead family the cemetery has been there for over 100 years and through those years the community and family members have maintained this cemetery, it has never been lost or let go of.
Thanks Joan for pointing this out. What the reporter left out, was that after I said that I “discovered” the cemetery, while walking one winter day in 1987, I immediately started asking my neighbors about it. I particularly mentioned Mary Mead Jensen, who was the one who told me about the significance of this pioneer cemetery to our Highlandlake/Mead community. For several years after that, she and I would drive our mowers over there, and spend hours mowing the weeds down. Anyway,there is no doubt that just about everyone in the area knew about it, not to mention generations of high school boys who thrilled their girlfriends with fake ghost stories based on urban rumors (and in the process did untold vandalism and damage to irreplaceable markers).
So to clarify the story for the Mead/Jensen family, some of whom apparently feel that I misrepresented my part in all of this, my discovery, was for myself. While I was not the first person to discover the cemetery, what I did do was help reclaim the cemetery from years of neglect and the weedy, tangled mess that it had been allowed to fall into.
Thank you so much for coming out and covering this historic event. And the slideshow is beautiful!
I enjoyed the story very much and am interested in the outcome of the study of graves they are doing at Highlandlake cemetery. Pauli Smith has done a great job in getting this done. But an inaccuracy in the story is that Pauli discovered the cemetery 23 years ago. As a member of the Mead family the cemetery has been there for over 100 years and through those years the community and family members have maintained this cemetery, it has never been lost or let go of.
Thanks Joan for pointing this out. What the reporter left out, was that after I said that I “discovered” the cemetery, while walking one winter day in 1987, I immediately started asking my neighbors about it. I particularly mentioned Mary Mead Jensen, who was the one who told me about the significance of this pioneer cemetery to our Highlandlake/Mead community. For several years after that, she and I would drive our mowers over there, and spend hours mowing the weeds down. Anyway,there is no doubt that just about everyone in the area knew about it, not to mention generations of high school boys who thrilled their girlfriends with fake ghost stories based on urban rumors (and in the process did untold vandalism and damage to irreplaceable markers).
So to clarify the story for the Mead/Jensen family, some of whom apparently feel that I misrepresented my part in all of this, my discovery, was for myself. While I was not the first person to discover the cemetery, what I did do was help reclaim the cemetery from years of neglect and the weedy, tangled mess that it had been allowed to fall into.
Pauli Smith