Will Hill Crest Cemetery rest in peace?

Published 3:00 pm Saturday, August 19, 2006

Owner Jan Feise no longer can tend historic cemetery grounds.

Over the years, Jan Feise has passed by each of them more times than she can remember.

Names, eternally etched, first in the memories of loved ones and then in the clusters of stones now embedded in a shady hillside off Old Mill Road.

A soldier killed in Vietnam in 1968. A former symphonic musician. Families, couples, friends, neighbors – all once authors of an island future that has since become the island’s past.

“There are a lot of stories here,” said owner and caretaker Feise, while strolling through shadows cast by the sleepy trees that edge the cemetery grounds.

She heard once that the original plan for the site was a strawberry farm.

Instead, the Hill Crest Cemetery took root in 1959 on just over three acres that Feise purchased 30 years ago from original owner Ken Hecker.

Now Feise wants to donate the cemetery to someone who’ll keep the moss from obscuring the memories of those buried there.

“I can’t take care of it anymore,” said Feise, who retired when she sold her toy store, the Calico Cat, in 2005. “I’d love to see Rotary or Kiwanis take the place over. It’s not a money maker by the time you pay for upkeep, but it would be a valuable community service.”

In the face of rising property taxes, Hill Crest Cemetery Incorporated – of which Feise is a shareholder – is selling a five acre parcel that abuts the cemetery.

The corporation owns the cemetery as well, but rather than selling it along with the larger parcel, plans to donate it to an as yet unknown nonprofit organization.

Feise is concerned that whomever buys the surrounding land for development might abandon or neglect the cemetery if it was included in the deal.

The Bainbridge Island Land Trust will protect an acre and a half of the larger parcel, which includes a pond, but decided against caring for the cemetery grounds.

Feise hasn’t yet spoken with representatives from the Bainbridge Island Rotary Club or the Kiwanis Club of Bainbridge, though she plans to contact both in addition to several other groups about the property.

Bill and Amy Chamberlain, who live next door to the cemetery on Old Mill Road, recently began helping Feise by caring for the grounds when she was away.

“We do it to support the cemetery,” Amy said. “It’s a wonderful neighborhood project and we’re glad to help out.”

Duties include cleaning the headstones, helping locate burial sites and mowing the lawn – a two hour task – on the cemetery-owned riding lawnmower.

Amy said the couple would offer its services to the new owner as well, though only on a part-time basis.

A self-proclaimed lover of cemeteries, she values Hill Crest’s presence in the neighborhood and the island community.

“Every time we go on vacation I make the family go to the cemetery wherever we are,” she said with a chuckle. “It’s such a great way to learn the history of an area.”

Feise, too, acknowledged the historical importance of Hill Crest, not only for the families of those buried there, but for her own family.

“My two boys grew up mowing the lawn there,” she said.

In addition to the several veterans buried at Hill Crest are a number of recognizable names from the island’s past.

Some of the graves, which by covenant must be flat, are bedecked with memorial flowers. Others rest unadorned in quiet dignity.

“This young man was in a popular band on the island,” Feise said, pointing to one of the markers. “After he died his friends and bandmates used to come here to play music near his grave.”

Asked about passing along the cemetery to someone else, Feise gave a brief but fitting eulogy:

“It’s a pretty place,” she said. “I’ll miss it.”