Columbarium & Memorial Garden Expansion

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” – John 14:3 (NRSV)

Few things in life are as certain as death. In John’s Gospel, Jesus sits down with his friends the evening before his own death to comfort them, and to remind them that he is going to prepare a place for them. For Christians, death is not the end, but part of life, and our faith in Christ is the promise that God is always with us. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we are reminded that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). How we care for our church community through death is a faithful response to God’s promises.

When Hanna Dewitt (mother of parishioner Ruth Follett) died in October 1982, her children requested that she be buried on the campus of Saint Stephen’s and the family planted a tree in her honor. The Rev. Doug Carpenter recalls that when Hanna was buried, the family gathered on the grounds for a long time, with Ruth’s children telling stories of their grandmother.

Years later, a playground was to be constructed at the location of her ashes. As Doug writes in his history of Saint Stephen’s, “I called (Ruth) to tell her of the situation. Perhaps we could move her mother’s ashes and the tree to a new location. Later that day, she called and told me that the entire family thought it would be absolutely wonderful to have a playground directly over Hanna’s ashes in that place where we had all sat on the ground and told stories about her. When I hung up, I leaned back in my chair not bothering to fight back the tears.”

About a decade after Hanna’s death, the current location of the Saint Stephen’s Memorial Garden was chosen, and the memorial wall was constructed in the mid-1990s. Since then, as the congregation has grown, many people have been interred in the Memorial Garden, and we now have more reservations for the memorial wall than we have space to put them.

In response, the Vestry has embraced the development of an expansive memorial project including a renovated memorial area, a columbarium with 100 niches, a new memorial wall that will hold over 500 names, and a more accessible area. The total cost of the project is estimated to be $806,000 which will be raised from fundraising and the sale of plaques and niches. Over this month, you are invited to one of three different listening sessions to learn about how to support the memorial garden project. Sign up to attend one of the sessions on May 18 or 25 from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. or May 22 at 10:15 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., all taking place in the memorial garden. I invite you to sign up here.

I look forward to sharing this important and beautiful work and give thanks to the countless hours spent by our Memorial Garden Committee including Wally and Angelika Evans, Russ and SuAnn Vandevlde, Lois and Van Chaplin, Todd Dorlon, Steve Smith, Jane Pounds, Ann Oliver, Chris Boles, Katherine Owens, Robin Savage, and our architect John Wilson.

If you are unable to attend one of our sessions but want to learn more, please reach out to me directly or Pat Bills at pat@ssechurch.org.

Faithfully,

The Rev. John B. Burruss