Springfield Memorial Gardens and Funeral Home, 7305 South Main Street, has been in operation since 1963. Its original name was Springfield Memorial Cemetery and Lowell Rhoden was its owner. Through out the years Springfield Memorial Gardens and Funeral Home has had its share of ups and downs. All of the owners of the cemetery have had high hopes for its future and all have left their mark in history through this business. Springfield Memorial Gardens and Funeral Home is a direct link to Springfield's past and continues to play a role in Springfield's on-going history.
During its years of existence, Springfield Memorial Gardens and Funeral Home has had several owners. Some of these did well and others did not. "In 1984 new owner Mack Moore inherited his set of problems. The owners before him were accused of doing less than their share of work on the cemetery. The interment record books were not kept up to date therefore causing legal problems" (Springfield News). Along with that problem, the previous owners sold dozens of crypts to families and there was no place to put the bodies if and when the people died. As the new director/owner of Springfield Memorial Gardens, Mack Moore needed to come up with an idea that would boost sales and he needed to make sure that there were enough mausoleums (a large stately tomb or a building housing such a tomb or tombs (Heritage 514)) to accommodate the people who were coming in and who expected to have a space reserved for them.
About ten years or so after Mack Moore had been owner of Springfield Memorial, he ran into some legal trouble. A local man, Ronald Sears, sued Mr. Moore for being "unprofessional" and "outrageous." This was neither the first nor the last complaint about Mr. Moore. Over the next couple of years Mr. Moore had nothing but trouble, however, he did a good job of getting Springfield Memorial Gardens business back on track.
Mr. Moore came up with the idea to build a combination funeral home and wedding chapel. It was the first of its kind in Oregon, an idea Mr. Moore got from a funeral home in Los Angeles. Mr. Moore was the first person to wed in that chapel. Since there was not a large demand for weddings, the new owners decided not to offer weddings anymore. It is now only used for funeral purposes
Springfield Memorial Gardens and Funeral Home is the only perpetual cemetery in Springfield. A perpetual cemetery must put a certain percent of every sale made into an endowment care fund. Every six months the cemetery has to do a report for the Secretary of State concerning those funds. These funds are invested so that they can generate interest, but are invested in very restrictive ways. In the case of a cemetery ever becoming full, the whole idea behind the endowment fund is that, hopefully, it will generate enough interest to pay for a grounds person to maintain the cemetery. David Noble, area manager of all SCI cemeteries in the Eugene/Springfield area, said he, "Has yet to see a cemetery fill up." Generally most cemeteries will add another garden or build more mausoleums.
In a perpetual care cemetery it is up to the cemetery to take care of all maintenance. There are people in charge of the upkeep of the cemetery. If a marker is damaged, the cemetery must replace it, whereas in a non-perpetual care cemetery it is up to the family to do that. A big irritation to family members is when they ask for something to be done year after year and it is still not fixed. One of the biggest irritations is when a grave has started to sink into the ground. Years of pressure on the grave from things like riding lawnmowers and backhoes can cause a grave to move deeper into the ground. When this happens it is up to the cemetery to even the ground back up, usually by digging a few feet down and putting in gravel or cement so that the ground is even again. In the past' the upkeep of Springfield Memorial Gardens was not that what it should’ve been. Recently the new owners are working their hardest to get everything done, but it is a lot of hard work. Right now Springfield Memorial has 2-3 maintenance people and they are in charge of taking care of all the upkeep. In their spare time they are to fix damaged markers, sunken graves and things like that. These things take a lot of time, to fix a marker it can take up to five hours and to fix a sunken grave it can take up to three hours. The newer gardens at Springfield Memorial are being kept up very well, but the older ones are the ones that the maintenance people are working diligently to fix. In an outside cemetery there is no one to take care of maintenance. They typically only have a caretaker that oversees the books.
Springfield Memorial Gardens is divided into eleven different gardens. The oldest garden is called the Garden of Pines and that is where the body of Patricia Elliott is located. The first body buried at Springfield Memorial Gardens was that of 26 year old Patricia Elliott of Springfield who was said to have committed suicide on July 26, 1964. She was buried three days later. The two newest gardens have not actually been developed yet but they will be called the Garden of Peace and the Garden of Bethany. A few of the gardens are unique gardens. For example, the Garden of Roses is the cremation garden, where only cremation remains are buried; also Babyland is used for the purpose of burying babies. There is also a garden called the Garden of Veterans. Here only veterans and their wives are allowed to be buried. They are not confined to this garden however. If they chose to be buried in the another part of the cemetery they are allowed, although purchasing a plot in the Garden of Veterans tends to be less expensive that purchasing a plot in any of the other gardens. Generally the reason that plots in the veteran area are less expensive than the rest of the cemetery is because it is the cemeteries "contribution to the veterans", so to speak. The two newest gardens currently being used are Extended Oaks and Extended Pines. These are the only two gardens that allow upright memorials. The reason behind this is because they are a perpetual care cemetery and it is easier for them to maintain the cemetery with flat markers rather than upright memorials. The rest of the cemetery consists of flat markers. In Extended Oaks upright memorials are only allowed in every other row. Behind Extended Oaks is where the future Garden of Peace will be located and to the right of Extended Oaks is where the future Garden of Bethany will be located. Currently there are 6,075 bodies buried in Springfield Memorial Gardens and more are added each week.
Bodies can be buried in two different ways. They can be buried in ground (interment), or above ground (entombment) , where they are put into a mausoleum.
Internment is a fairly new thing in North America. It started because of the settlers traveling west. When someone died they had to bury the body. Entombment was the most common type of burial in the past. Some famous mausoleums are Westminster Abby, Taj Mahal and all the Egyptian pyramids. Cremation is the least expensive of the three options of burial. Internment and entombment are usually about the same price.
There are two main types of markers (they are no longer called headstones), bronze and granite. Some markers are bigger than other and have more than one name on them; this is called a companion marker. Generally a companion marker means a husband and a wife are buried right next to each other.
Veterans and their wives also have the choice of being buried next to each other. All veterans are entitled to a burial in a national cemetery and a grave marker. Their spouses and children are also entitled to the same. The cemetery always saves a place next to the veteran for their spouse to be buried. A veteran’s marker is always bronze and usually includes the rank, name, branch, wars that the person was in, and date of birth and death.
Many remember their loved ones and the ones that died for our country on Memorial Day. At Springfield Memorial Gardens a few thousand people come to the cemetery to celebrate the holiday. The local VFW (Veteran’s of Foreign Wars) come up to the cemetery every year and put flags on every veteran’s graves. There is a great celebration there, too. Singers sing and bagpipers play. The celebration usually lasts a couple of hours. There is a great memorial at the cemetery that remembers the veterans. It has been around almost since the establishment of the cemetery.
In 1997 the employees at Springfield Memorial Gardens decided to bury a time capsule. It consists of 45 different items and will be dug up in the year 2047. It is marked in the center of the cemetery with an engraved plaque.
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Brandi Volk
Springfield Memorial Gardens and Funeral Home
Thurston High School
May 19, 2000
The project in its entirety available at
The Springfield Museum
590 Main St
Springfield, OR 97477
