Fairlawn staff, community celebrate Columbarium Plaza dedication
Jun. 2—After eight long years, Fairlawn staff officially dedicated the brand new Columbarium Plaza on Monday. Board Chair Lou Watkins said the process was long but worth the wait. The marble columbarium, a structure with niches where funeral urns for people who have been cremated can be store, arrived from Washington state. It was placed at Fairlawn in February and offered a special place for families to gather and visit their loved ones.
"This has been a dream of Fairlawn for at least eight years," Watkins previously told the News Press. "Since I've been chairing the board, we've been raising the money to do this because we wanted the project to be paid for."
Watkins also announced some new additions to the Columbarium Plaza: the village lamps surrounding it, and a new flag pole. Neither had been used until Monday.
"I want to say just a word about the flag pole. The flag pole was a gift from Dave Lambert to Gary LaFollette and Gary, of course, had in mind the cemetery here. So this is the first use of our new flagpole, and we're calling it the LaFollette Lambert flagpole in their honor," Watkins said. "We lost Gary last spring, and we miss him."
Bonnie Perry donated the lamps in honor of her daughter Melissa and her husband, Dr. Bruce Petty.
"They're both very special to us and, of course, special to Bonnie, and Bonnie is very special to us in that she also is our landscaping chair. So the flowers and the ambiance that you see the little special touches are gifts from Bonnie as well," Watkins said.
At the dedication, Watkins gave everyone in attendance the history of how the columbarium idea began and why it was important for Fairlawn to have one. She said Gary and Sharla LaFollette were the ones who suggested it.
"About nine years ago, Sharla LaFollette gave a program — and the only time we've ever had a program given at an annual meeting — and she stressed to us that today's society requires that cemeteries provide columbariums," Watkins said.
Watkins said she knew they couldn't afford a columbarium because they were expensive.
Watkins said the entire columbarium was $125,000, which she said isn't as expensive as they typically are because they bought it before inflation hit. Even though it would be a lot of money, the Fairlawn board got involved and said this was a project they needed to do.
"And so the board undertook this as a project about eight years ago and we don't like to do things out here unless we have the money to pay for it. So we made our plans, and we drew up some kind of a business plan, but we had to raise the money."
Watkins said the next challenge was figuring out how to raise the money and move forward with the columbarium project.
"And so I was visiting with a good friend of mine on the phone one day and mentioned our concern about this, and she said, 'Yes, that certainly is a project that we need to do,' and she called me back about a day or two later and said, 'My husband and I want to fund that project,'" Watkins said.
The couple wanted to remain anonymous, but Watkins said she'd like to name the plaza after them if they changed their mind.
Watkins went over various donors who contributed to making this project possible. Sally Smith, another person who helped make this project come alive, spoke next to talk about her role.
"And let's give Sally a hand because she's the one who brought this to fruition through pandemic and through tripping over her little doggie and going into the hospital for a long time," Watkins said.
Smith spoke highly of everyone who engineered, constructed, or had any part in helping this project. She said she wished she could have been more involved, but she had problems that prevented her.
"So I just want to thank everybody that's here that's connected with this project," Smith said. "I can't say enough for your help, and everything that you've done wasn't hands-on as much as I had hoped to be due to other problems."
At the end of the dedication, Watkins invited everyone who had a flower — which they received at the beginning — to put it in a special vase at the front of the columbarium.
"Many people scatter ashes, and that's fine. But when you do that, they're gone," Watkins said. "There's really not a physical record. But here, you can have a physical record of that person's life. So that's our commitment to Fairlawn, and our commitment to you is to provide that as an option."
