Graveyard Shift Edgecliff Residents Are Resurrecting The Woodlawn Cemetery After Years Of Neglect

In Wendie Kiourkas’s eyes, the Woodlawn Cemetery was a disgrace to the dead.

Vandals had broken headstones. Neighbors once erected a tetherball pole for children’s play. Some stored boats and built sheds on the property. For years, weeds overtook the small cemetery at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Thierman Road and the fence stayed locked.

“I think this place has sat long enough without anyone recognizing it,” said Kiourkas, who lives just a few blocks from the cemetery. “It really bothered me these people weren’t being respected.”

Now, the Edgecliff woman and other neighbors are resurrecting the old cemetery.

Under the shade of ponderosa pines lay the tombs of the forgotten. Pioneer families. Children. Babies who might have died from an outbreak of tuberculosis. Many were buried here more than a century ago.

This spring, after more than a year of research, Kiourkas and fellow Edgecliff neighbors are placing white crosses on the Woodlawn Cemetery’s graves.

The crosses read “Baby Dishman,” “Baby Ross,” “Unknown.”

Meanwhile, they’re planting rose bushes dedicated to neighbors they’ve loved and lost. All in hopes of turning this long-neglected cemetery into a place of community pride.

“It should have been done years ago,” said neighbor Josie Zeller, who used to hold the only known key to the cemetery gate. “It’s respect to the pioneers.”

The small lot surrounded by a five-foot chain link fence is rarely visited by those looking for loved ones.

A few have placed irises on graves. One family came last Memorial Day.

There’s good reason why this cemetery has remained dormant. Most don’t know who was buried here or when.

Kiourkas is working to change that. Having taken the lead in the restoration project, she spent more than a year poring over old library books and newspaper clippings. She contacted genealogical societies and county employees, who at first told her they didn’t even know the cemetery was there.

Finally, with the help of neighbors’ memories and old records, she was able to piece together much of the cemetery’s history.

“Each new thing tells a new story. A new story of the whole area and the people who lived here,” Kiourkas said. “They were some of the first people to be around here.”

At least 102 burial spots have been identified. The identities of all but about 10 of the occupants of those graves also have been identified.

The last known burial was in 1967, 79 years after the cemetery’s first.

Many of those buried at Woodlawn are children. Kiourkas believes they are there because the tuberculosis sanatarium, now the Park Place Retirement Community, was only blocks away.

The cemetery started as the Englewood Cemetery by the Southern Methodist Church in 1888, one year before Washington became a state.

Later, it was renamed Woodlawn when the Corbin Park Methodist Church took it over.

Two fires ripped through the cemetery, destroying wooden grave markers. A neighborhood home economics club replaced them with small concrete markers with only names. Those were later destroyed by vandals.

Spokane County owns it now, but it’s up to the neighborhood to take care of it. Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts and juvenile corrections programs tend to it monthly.

“Past boards felt there were other priorities other than taking care of abandoned cemeteries,” said county commissioner Kate McCaslin.

Commissioners have already approved helping pay for a water meter.

For Jack Foust, who has lived in the Edgecliff area for 55 years and who helped make the newly installed crosses, the cemetery has never looked finer.

“We’ve driven by it hundreds and thousands of times,” he said. “It hasn’t been taken care of for what seems like a century.”

Kiourkas’ eventual goal is to make part of the cemetery a working ash garden, where people can bring their loved ones’ ashes and use it to fertilize rose buses.

“It’s like a living monument for that person and you’re beautifying the cemetery at the same time,” she said.

She’s doesn’t want to see this small piece of Valley history neglected any longer. There are memories here.