The Inland Northwest’s most beautiful – and most heartbreaking – cemetery is located about a mile west of Spokane Falls Community College. Fort George Wright Military Cemetery sits along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Centennial Trail. More than 250 babies born to military families between 1951 and 1959 are buried there. The grave markers are simple and white, like the markers of the soldiers interred alongside them.

The possible reasons the babies died have been researched but never adequately explained. Many of the babies’ parents are dead now, too. The ones who are left are older, and some are quite frail. I have written about the cemetery many times. The stories are always sad. Babies who die before really living, and mysteries that remain unsolved, provide reason enough for melancholy. Recently, though, I visited the cemetery again and found much joy there.

A woman named Terri Gelhausen visits the cemetery often, because her sister, Bonnie Joy, who died in 1951 of spina bifida, is buried there. Terri has lupus, and the illness steals away her breath. Her parents, especially her mother, also run out of steam easily. When Terri discovered two years ago that the long pathway leading from the parking lot to the cemetery had been gated, she got steaming mad. She and her parents could no longer drive their car to the cemetery entrance and walk a few feet to the grave of Bonnie Joy.

Washington State Parks had good reason to place the gate between the parking lot and the pathway leading to the cemetery entrance. Vehicle-driving vandals plagued the cemetery, and the gate deterred them. Terri understood, but surely, she believed, there existed some solution for those who found the 180-yard pathway walk impossible. In March 2006, I wrote about Terri’s lament.

About the same time, Isaac Glanzer was looking for an Eagle Scout project. He had planned to construct a shelter at the wildlife refuge on Fairchild Air Force Base, but the wait for approval was too long. William Worrall, a Fairchild engineer, remembered the column about Terri’s lament. He suggested to Isaac that he build benches along the cemetery’s pathway for those who visit when the gate to the pathway is locked. (The gate is open on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, allowing people to drive right up to the cemetery’s entrance.)

Isaac led a group of 25 volunteers who put in 85 hours building and securing in place two redwood benches. They are solid, simple benches, reflecting the solid simplicity of the babies’ gravestones.

Recently, Terri and her parents, Jack and Hilla May Holloway, met Isaac and his parents, Donna and Keith Glanzer, at the cemetery. Together, they walked the long pathway. Terri’s parents paused in the journey to rest on Isaac’s benches.

Isaac, 18, is a shy young man who wore his Scout uniform to the meeting. He downplayed his accomplishment, his eyes looking to the hard earth beneath the benches, where the posts that anchor the benches there were dug with much difficulty.

His parents spoke the pride for him. His father said, “Isaac will be able to come here 20 years from now and say, ‘This is what I did.’ “

Cemeteries coax reflection upon life’s mysteries, such as why some babies never get a chance at life, while others grow to become teens and Eagle Scouts. And still others last into older adulthood and return year after year to visit the graves of those they have outlived but not out-loved.

Grave markers reveal only headlines about a person’s life. No room for nuance. No record of the strangers who eased a person’s burden, the way Isaac and his Eagle Scout project eased the burden of Terri and her parents.

These stories of strangers helping each other are hidden all around us, buried in the lives of people who have died before us. May we take some time this Memorial Day weekend and remember.