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She Runs A Graveyard Shift

PHOTO BY YVETTE C. HAMMETT

Jessica Cross gets help from her sons, K.C. Cross, 7 and Kyle Cross, 3, while friend Rachel Grotheer, 10 watches. The children spent part of their time exploring the old cemetery, keeping a close eye out for ghosts.

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By YVETTE C. HAMMETT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 17, 2007

Updated: 11/15/2007 07:55 pm

Additional Photos

RIVERVIEW - Most days, only the sound of traffic breaks the silence among the hand-carved headstones and finely polished granite markers mingling among silk and fresh flowers in the 121-year-old Hackney Cemetery.

Once or twice a year, however, the place buzzes with the sounds of weed trimmers whirring, rakes scraping and families chattering as they lovingly tend to history's orphan - a graveyard without a full-time keeper.

With faded flowers standing at attention next to fresh autumn arrangements and Spanish moss waving in the cool breeze from gigantic oak trees, Florence Sikes stood in their shade, checking the progress of those who gathered to help spruce up the old boneyard Nov. 10.

She said this labor of love started in 1979, when there was no one else to tend the cemetery. She started calling family and friends to gather there, near where Providence and Hackney roads meet, to care for the final resting places of long-passed relatives and Riverview pioneers.

More recently, maintenance workers for the Serenity Meadows Cemetery have taken on the task of mowing regularly.

But the details, such as picking up litter, raking debris and trimming brush, are left to those who care most, said Sikes, who organizes clean-ups at the cemetery.

"It's for personal reasons, and somebody needs to do it," she said, noting that her son, his wife and their two children are among those whose final resting places lie inside the gate. Sandy Sikes and children Yancy and Jamie died in a fire in 1979, and James Wesley Sikes succumbed in 1986 to illness.

Among Sikes' duties is tracking down troublemakers.

"Three or four years ago, I went to put flowers on my daughter-in-law's grave and found out somebody had stolen the flowers that were already there," Sikes said. "I found out who it was and swore out a warrant for their arrest and prosecuted."

She has since established a trust for the old graveyard, which helped cover the cost of building a fence around the property and paving a road that winds past the many monuments.

Others have helped, too.

"If people want to give, they give. If they don't, I call them back," Sikes said. "I'm persistent."

She has a true fondness for the place.

"It gets next to my heart every once in a while," she said.

But she can't serve as a one-woman caretaker.

"A graveyard is not something for one or two people to tackle," said Melanie Thompson, who helped at the cleanup Nov. 10.

"You need community. That's how it should be," she said, holding a bag while Sikes' daughter, Janis Sikes Boscarello, shoveled in leaves.

"I always pick on relatives first," Florence Sikes said. "I've called over a hundred people this time."

Twenty-seven had signed up by 10 a.m., half of them family.

Among them were her two sons, Troy and Mason.

"There's lots of history right here in these few squares," Mason Sikes said, pointing to the family plots. "Mom has brothers, nieces and nephews up in here."

Florence Sikes pointed to the headstone above the grave of her father, Hiram Padgett, whose grandfather was the first postmaster in Alger, a tiny berg near Fort Drum.

Others carry the family name.

"I come down here every time," Ron Padgett, Florence Sikes' nephew, said before revving up a weed eater. "It needs to be done, and somebody's gotta do it."

"It's work, so it's not like I like to do it," said Clint Brown, another nephew. "But my aunt puts it together, and I respect her, so I show up."

Last year, he said, the cemetery was in worse shape.

"We probably took out 20 to 30 loads of foliage," Brown said. "Now, we're just maintaining what we already did."

Some of the younger crowd mixed a bit of adventure into the work.

"The coolest part about being here is helping out, and if there are any ghosts here, I think they would be at peace," said 10-year-old Rachel Grotheer. "If there are ghosts, I don't know yet."

Reporter Yvette C. Hammett can be reached at (813) 657-4532 or at yhammett@ tampatrib.com.

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