On 26 June 2014 I stopped for a visit at the Richmond, Utah, City Cemetery. I have a number of family buried there. It had been several years since I had been to the cemetery. I stopped by the Jonas family graves and was shocked by what I saw. Open scarring and damage to the tombstones. This is a follow up to a previous post.
I reached out to Richmond City Hall to find out who was in charge of the Cemetery. I was given the name and phone number of Jeff Young and Cheryl Peck. I called and left a message for both. I returned to the Cemetery to take some additional pictures.
Over the next few weeks, I called and left messages for Jeff Young and Cheryl Peck. I indicated who I was and why I was calling. I never received a call back from either.
A month or two later after no response from Mr. Young or Ms. Peck, I called back to Richmond City Hall. I was given the phone number for Marlowe Adkins. I had met Mr. Adkins when I worked for Inlande Environmental and Richmond City was doing some upgrades to their wastewater treatment facility. Mr. Adkins explained to me that the Cemetery had a Citizens Committee that was responsible for the Cemetery and Mr. Young was the one to talk to regarding the care of the Cemetery.
I had not been to the cemetery for probably close to 8 years. As far as I can tell on the family tombstones all the damage occurred during that time.
I walked around the cemetery and snapped photos of the obvious damage on other grave markers.
Previous Mayor of Richmond Ross Plant’s tombstone didn’t fare any better. 
This is obviously from repeated mowing and dragging the mower deck across the stone face. 
Notice the large chip on the top right. 
Both top corners completely chipped away. 
Dragging of the metal along the back by the mower. 
Large gash across the top chipping the stone and leaving the metal rust. 
American Legion medallion completely broken from its rod. 
The American Legion badges don’t even have the posts anymore. 
This has been sitting there for a good while. 
Looks like the city is kind enough to not throw away everyone’s hook! 
Substantial chipping away on the corners of the stone. 
Watch your step. 
The entire stone has been pushed aside. 
After not hearing from Mr. Young or Ms. Peck for several months, I reached out to an attorney regarding liability for the damages to these stones. Ultimately, the determination was made that proving the date of the damage was going to be hard and second Utah only has a small time frame in which to make notice of the injury. The king has again protected itself against liability. There would be no recourse against Richmond. Some of the FindaGrave photos uploaded in 2010 did have some of the damages showing, so we were obviously over the known injury time frame to make a claim.
Hopefully citizens and residents of Richmond would care how their Cemetery is being cared for, but I guess since it happened and no action was taken, I guess I might be wrong. Not my fight. But I can hope that shining a light on the issue might help.
Sagacity 
Hi! I understand this post is almost a year old, but I’m a reporter at The Herald Journal, in Logan (just south of Richmond), and is love to cover this. Would you be interested in an interview about your experience?
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I used to live by here the caretakers are sloppy and most of the time its full of weeds. The newest batch cut down all the weeds but didnt care how they did it. I went up to take care of my relatives frequently and reported damages several times and nothing ever gets done.
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Damage to cemetery markers by mowers and irrigation systems is a common problem. I will say it was a concern of mine when working as coordinator of the Bear River Heritage Area (a seven county region in northern Utah and southeastern Idaho) and we decided to conduct a cemetery preservation workshop several years ago. We learned about cleaning markers, resetting leaning markers, and what cemetery districts can do to become more aware of how damage occurs. State History conducted a workshop in Salt Lake and Park City in August 2019, and we planned another one in partnership with State History, which was to be held in Randolph this last summer, but we had to postpone but because of COVID. Even though I recently retired, I hope the Randolph workshop will happen next summer or fall, and I hope to be able to help with that. In the meantime check the State History website under cemeteries, and you will find useful information about cemetery preservation. I know they want to continue offering the workshops and would like to know who is interested. Any Barry is the contact person. https://history.utah.gov/cemeteries
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