After having concerns about the overgrown grass and fallen tree limbs at the Willis Cemetery, grieving Conroe father Doug Luton is organizing a clean up at the cemetery at 5 p.m. Saturday.
Luton’s 19-year-old daughter, Yasmine, died in 2019 and she is buried at the cemetery that dates back to the early 1800s.
ON YOURCONROENEWS.COM: What Conroe ISD students need to know about bus routes, getting to school this year
Luton, his daughter’s mother and family friends regularly maintain his daughter’s grave site. However, it troubled him that other graves in the cemetery were overgrown by grass and weeds and had debris and fallen tree limbs around them.
“All the people who are buried here, have people who loved them and cared about them,” he said. “If you don’t have family buried here, you probably don’t think about it much, but I think about how these people were loved by someone.”
The cemetery is at Cemetery Lane and East FM 1097 just east of Willis’ downtown area.
According to the cemetery database FindAGrave.com, there are 2,454 graves and some of the sites date back to the 1800s.
In the middle section of the cemetery, a wrought iron fence surrounds some of the very earliest burial sites. Many of the ancestors who were maintaining the plots have now died as well.
In late June, Luton posted on the Facebook page I Love Conroe that he was organizing a clean up and got more than 100 comments with people wanting to help.
On Saturday, Boy Scout Troop 618 will be one of the groups assisting with the clean up. The group meets at the adjacent VFW Post 618 that is just to the east of the cemetery.
Scout leader Mike Davis said the Scouts often visit the cemetery and care for the graves of the veterans.
In addition to cleaning up around the veterans’ graves, they also place flags for national holidays and wreaths during the holidays.
“I just really hate seeing someone’s final resting place in as bad a shape as it’s in,” Davis said.
According to a 2009 Courier article, the Paddock family has maintained the cemetery for decades.
ON YOURCONROENEWS.COM: How to stay safe visiting San Jacinto River amid series of recent drownings
Mel Paddock took it on as a personal challenge from when he was involved in the Scouts and encouraged to keep the cemetery clean.
The Paddocks had been using donated funds to keep up with maintenance for the cemetery, but those funds have run dry, according to Willis residents familiar with the cemetery.
The upkeep of the cemetery became personal to Luton when his daughter — a Willis High graduate — died by suicide in February 2019.
He now runs the nonprofit Your Life Matters to work with people in crisis. He’s also hopeful that the Willis community can come together to regularly maintain the cemetery.
“As a community we can do this,” he said.
