RUSSELLVILLE — Stephanie Warwick has worked for attorneys and judges her entire career, but she said being director of the city-owned Oakland Cemetery in Russellville is the best job she never wanted.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think this is what I would be doing,” she said.
Warwick, a paralegal, said she was hired to work in City Attorney Trey Smith’s office in 2014, but a few months later, she was asked to be in charge of the Oakland Cemetery. It had been handled by another employee but needed a full-time person, she said.
“Hey, I like a challenge — I really do — but I was actually mortified because I had a phobia of cemeteries, and now I don’t. This has been excellent therapy,” she said.
“I said, ‘OK, I can do this,’ and it kind of took on a life of its own,” Warwick said — no pun intended.
The Oakland Cemetery is the final resting place for almost 5,000 people, including 21 mayors — among those the first mayor and postmaster of Russellville, Joseph H. “Rate” Battenfield, who died in 1909 — and the city’s namesake, Dr. Thomas Russell.“I do like history, but I’m a passionate person when it comes to doing my job. If you do a job, you need to do it at your absolute best,” she said. “Within five, six months, it was like, ‘This is my baby, and we’re going to do everything we can to take care of it.’”
That means improving the 30-acre cemetery at Eighth and Detroit streets in the heart of the city.
Under Warwick’s direction, 10 acres were developed, called the Memorial Garden Addition. It includes a granite columbarium for urns, which was installed a year ago. About two weeks ago, a garden to complement the structure was completed.
The garden includes a Japanese maple in the center, flanked by a large river rock, decorative grasses, nandina bushes and more.
“The garden was for the aesthetic, but within this garden, we can have traditional cremation burial — some people want to be in the ground — as well as the columbarium, because some people prefer to be in a structure.”
The section also includes a couple of benches.
“When you go to the cemetery to pay your respects, you want to be able to sit and reflect or just be. It’s nice to have a serene area to do that,” she said.
Warwick said more people are choosing cremation because it costs less than a traditional burial and is thought to be better for the environment.
“We were doing some research and found, ‘OK, there’s a trend here; this is what’s happening,’” she said.
The 72-niche columbarium was purchased for $14,000 from Everlasting Granite in Elberton, Georgia. The price was a “great discount,” she said. “We did look for a bargain, but we looked for quality.”
She said the granite structure is “beautiful, a piece of art.”
Warwick said that after she worked with the granite company on the design, she took a drawing of their vision to the cemetery board for its input. She said it took about a year to get input and finalize the design.
The remaining acreage, the northern portion of the 10 acres, is for traditional burial, she said.
A few spots have been sold in the columbarium, and now that an access road has been partially completed, traditional burial spaces in the addition can be sold, she said. The road will be completed as finances allow, she said.
Garland Stuber, chairman of the Oakland Cemetery Board and a member of the Russellville City Council, said he has “mixed emotions” about the columbarium.
“I guess it’s the coming thing,” he said.”It’s not something that really appeals to me, but obviously, it appeals to a lot of people, and that’s what the city is about. The city’s main function is to provide a service to people. We can’t only provide the services that we think are important, or that I think are important; we’ve got to provide services that everybody else thinks are important.”
Warwick said that when she gets half of the spaces in the columbarium sold, she plans to request more money from the City Council for a second granite columbarium, “a twin” to the first.
“We want to complete the other half of the circle in a couple of years. In reality, it will probably be five years,” she said. “Right now, it’s half a pie, but it looks good.”
The project has cost $18,872 to date, Warwick said. She said city employees poured the concrete, and a local crane company helped set the columbarium on its foundation.
“We are making an investment in the city and in our people, really, because this is their final resting place. We are making an investment in the heart and the soul of the city. To me, it’s an emerald in the crown of the city. It reflects the attitude and the aura of the city,” she said.
“With a cemetery, it’s not really a revenue maker, but here is my thing — a city that owns a cemetery, if you cannot take care of your dead, how can you take care of the living? You have to show your respect for your history, your past. You have founding fathers in this cemetery; you have their mothers, fathers,” Warwick said.
In addition to mayors, other significant residents buried in the Oakland Cemetery include U.S. Rep. Brooks Hays, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who grew up in Russellville.
“The third Oklahoma Territorial governor is buried out there,” she said.
“We have 280 known veterans, but we’re still researching. They go from as recent as the Persian Gulf back to the Spanish-American War. One, Andrew Horatio Scott, a judge in the area, has a star that says War of 1812. I’m researching him.”
A “huge” statue of the Virgin Mary, who has an anchor at her feet, marks Scott’s grave, Warwick said “It’s beautiful; it marks for him; his son, Capt. John Rice Homer Scott; and their wives.”
Warwick said the anchor symbolizes that the Virgin Mary is “in a saint’s role as protector of sailors and the light of a safe harbor.”
In addition to Russellville’s namesake, another notable resident of the Oakland Cemetery is Jacob Shinn, one of the original fathers of Russellville.
“He had the first business in town; it’s still standing downtown. It’s called the Shinn Building, always has been,”
she said.
It’s a passion — who are these people? Whether they’re significant or not in history, they’re significant in this area.”
Two beloved family pets are buried in the cemetery, too.
“We have two dogs, but that was prior to our rule of no pets,” she said. “Moochie and Molly are out there.”
Warwick said she always planned to go to law school, but something always got in the way. She said she enjoys coming to work every day.
“I get to help people at the worst possible time of their life and give them comfort. They know their loved ones, while I occupy this chair, are in good hands,” she said.
“It’s been a labor of love. It’s not what I was hired to do, but this has been my full-time job,” Warwick said. “You could spend a lifetime researching this.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com