By Rebecca Zepick
Last Updated: June 21, 2009
Ed Schoenberger moves quietly between graves, straightening flowers and inspecting headstones. Cemetery sexton, or grave keeper, conjures up the image of a reclusive figure, somewhat unaffected by the frequency of death.
However, in Greensburg's Fairview Cemetery, surrounded by rolling wheat fields, Schoenberger has quietly been finding lost people for more than 35 years.
"It doesn't matter whether you live for 10 seconds or 110 years, you were important to somebody and should be remembered," he said.
Schoenberger, also the curator of the Kiowa County Historical Museum, discovered something strange in his research. He found obituaries for people without marked graves in his cemetery.
"I got to noticing a line down here's baby so-and-so died or the wife of so-and-so died," he said.
He then cross-referenced the names in the historical records with his cemetery records and found 350 unmarked graves under his care. It bothered him.
"I thought, it's kinda sad that nobody remembers them," Schoenberger said.
He began to collect letters from funeral home markers, fixing them into concrete headstones and placing them on graves he could identify. However, it took time to collect the right letters, and while the nameless dead had lain in the cemetery for decades, he decided he couldn't wait.
Schoenberger created a palate of small, twisted copper wire pieces, each a letter or number. This allowed him to engrave names and tributes to those who had been anonymous for so long.
Soon, he began to collect items: car horns to act as vases, fenceposts to weld into a cross, hub cap toppers and clay angels -- anything that he thought might decorate the abandoned graves.
'Every person out here has a story'
Schoenberger gently wipes the prairie dust off a headstone with his hand. He knows many of them by name and calls out, "This is John Alfred Anderson," as he approaches a grave topped with a silver frame and yellow flowers. "I made it out of an old iron headboard, chain and whatever else I had."
For many people, these unmarked graves didn't matter, but to him, "Every person out here has a story."
Two red toy cars rest on a grave marked "Adam & Austin."
"They were triplets, and these two boys died in her womb," Schoenberger said, referring to their mother. "If they operated, they stood the chance of injuring the healthy one. She carried these two dead infants in her womb until they were born."
Schoenberger could have ignored the forgotten graves. Some people are unaware their family members are buried in Fairview Cemetery and are grateful when they discover the sexton's work. Schoenberger seems to appreciate the significance of remembering a deceased family member.
His words come haltingly as he approaches an intricate black iron cross, laced together by roses and a crucifix, to remember his mother. He used pieces of an old park bench that inspired him to create the memorial for Mary Schoenberger.
"She was cremated and wanted her ashes scattered, but I couldn't just throw the bag away," he said.
So Schoenberger buried the empty bag and built the sculpted cross with the inscription, "Gentle Woman, Quiet Light, Morning Star, So Strong and Bright. Gentle Mother, Peaceful Dove, Teach Us Wisdom, Teach Us Love."
When he began building gravestones out of recycled material in 1972, Schoenberger didn't consider it "environmentally friendly." He simply looked for unwanted items and forgotten people.
Today, he has given names to more than 350 men, women and children who were once part of the Greensburg community, but now rest in Fairview Cemetery. In the process, he lived out an example of caring for both the people and the world around him.
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Elliott School of Communication