On Sunday morning, May 1st (2005) nine members of the Wellsville
Exchange Club came together as volunteers with rakes in hand to clean-up one of
Wellsville’s oldest and historical cemeteries. (more.....Johnson
Cemetery)
The Johnson
Cemetery is situated behind the Jones Memorial hospital and is bordered by the
hospital’s parking lot. The cemetery holds much of Wellsville’s heritage. Over
the years this lovely cemetery with its beautiful old maple trees has fallen
into disrepair. The “Flood of 1972” removed a portion of the cemetery at the
same time as a wing of the hospital was lost. Funding and interest in the
upkeep of the grounds over the past few years has been poor. Many of the stones
are broken and have become unreadable.
As a community
service the Exchange Club decided to lend their support to help restore part of
the village’s history to an acceptable maintenance level. The task was quite
large. Limbs were down, trees and bushes needed to be pruned and trimmed. There
was litter to pick-up and debris to gather. Then the raking and mowing. The
final touch was re-propping the broken stones, so they are less likely to
accumulate any more damage. The Johnson Cemetery now looks like a well cared
for park, as it should for our ancestors to “rest in peace”.
The Exchange Club is a
group of men and women working together to make our communities better places to
live through programs of services in Americanism, Community Service, Youth
Activities and its national project, the Prevention of Child Abuse.