Vashon cemetery
Leslie Brown Photos
A range of gravestones adorn the cemetery, including a traditional granite marker at Robert Raab’s site, a mosaic tile marker designed by island artist Clare Dohna and a carved sculpture atop the gravestone of Gene Amondson, who carved many of the larger-than-life wooden sculptures found on Vashon. Below, Lisa Devereau looks at her family’s plot.
to remove the mannequin when the wind knocked it over, causing some visitors to think a person was lying on the ground. But for the most part, the small crew that oversees the cemetery — a rolling expanse that abuts the Sportsmen’s Club off of Cemetery Road — is a tolerant bunch. “People make things very personal. Most cemeteries won’t allow that,” Devereau said. The cemetery was started in 1888, when Frank and Clara Miner sold two acres to a newly formed cemetery board for $15. The first lots — room for eight grave spaces — sold for $5. (An individual space now sells for $850 to $1,200, depending on location.) For decades it was run by volunteers, including the Ladies Auxiliary, a group that raised $500 in 1946 to keep the Scotch broom in check, according to a two-page history of the cemetery written by islander Barbara Steen. The cemetery board, however, needed a steadier stream of revenue to tend to the property, and in 1976, Vashon voters approved the county’s first — and only — cemetery district, with a threemember elected board. Today, the cemetery district operates on an annual budget of $107,000, funded by Vashon property taxes. All told, it’s about 19 acres in size, though only 12 acres are developed. Two people, groundskeeper Vance Price and parttime administrator Wendy Braicks, are the only paid employees. About 4,000 people are buried there, 500 of whom are veterans. By almost any definition, Vashon Cemetery is a beautiful place — “a charming little cemetery,” as Commissioner Jay Hanson calls it. Towering Douglas firs surround it, and a few huge trees offer shade and structure in the middle. A marble columbarium — a wall with vaults in it for
cremated remains — sits near the center, not far from a large granite monument honoring men and women who died in war. And if one’s lucky enough to take a walk through it with Devereau, one gets a glimpse into island history. Devereau was raised in a home a half-mile down the street. Today, as the funeral director at Island Funeral Services and a cemetery district commissioner, she jokes that her whole life “is at this cemetery.” And indeed, as we wander among the tombstones and markers, she seems to have a story to go with many of the names we see. That was her former babysitter. Those two were the island’s first dispatchers. And there’s the name of a girl who used to get Devereau’s phone calls when she was young because their names were adjacent in Vashon’s tiny telephone book. She points out names that are familiar to me, as well: Larry Wall, the original owner of the Wallflower Building in town; Bea Ryan, who owned Bea’s Boutique where the credit union is now located; Bill Akers, a celebrated Vashon artist who died at age 41, three days after Devereau saw him at a First Friday event in town. Other names ring familiar because they’re now place names on the island: Hake, Raab, Wax. Devereau likes the old section near the center of the cemetery best, a place of etched granite markers, many now hard to read. She points to one, topped by a lamb carved of granite. “You’re not going to get anyone to grind you a lamb out of granite these days,” she said. But some of the newer ones also capture her imagination. “Do you like Harry Potter,” she asked. When I said yes, she took me to Brianna Chwaszczewski’s translucent glass marker, where the faint photo of the young woman
with her horse seemed to appear and then disappear, depending on the light, reminding Devereau of the moving photographs J.K. Rowling describes in her epic series. She also loves Arum’s artful grave, adorned by stones, native plants, poems and pictures, a site that suggests the rich life Arum, an environmental lawyer and activist, lived before his untimely death two years ago. As we took it in — the simple beauty of the site — Devereau read aloud the quote from Thoreau tucked among the stones: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” — Leslie Brown is the former editor of The Beachcomber.
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