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Edna Lewis, 96, honored for organizing, caring for Stillwell Community Cemetery

By Rose Hooper

In November, Edna Lewis was honored for her years of dedicated service to Stillwell Community Cemetery.

What makes it special is that Lewis has been upkeeping the cemetery for some 60 years. And even more special is the fact that she's 96 and still very much in charge.

When she first took on the task, the cemetery was covered in running briars, devoid of grass and full of unmarked graves.

"They asked me if I'd take over and I told them I didn't know if I could," Lewis said from her daughter Carolyn Buchanan's home in Dillsboro. "But I'll tell you what gave me the strength to do it. I knew Miss Kincaid who was overseer at Parris Cemetery and knowing she could do it inspired me." Lewis said she "didn't know beans about how to start" so she just started by jumping in feet first and pulling up those fat, pesky running briars.

"One section of the cemetery was known as the 'unknown land,' a place where there were graves underneath but none of them were marked. But every time a new grave was dug, you'd dig right into a grave that was already there."

So Lewis and her cousins took at pick up truck to Georgia where they purchased "little square footstones."

"We knew if we ever got grass growing good, a head stone and a foot stone would interfere with mowing so we decided just to mark one end of those graves with the little footstones." Reg Moody taught her how to identify the hidden graves. "You just jab in the ground with a pictchfork handle," she said with animated gestures. "If the handle goes through the hard top part of the ground, then falls through, there's your grave."

With help from her uncle and two cousins, Lewis tore out overgrown tangled boxwoods that at one point had been tiny grave markers and finally put some knowns to the "Unknown land." Grass, from the tons and tons of seed they sowed, was also giving shape to the cemetery shared jointly with Little Savannah and Webster Baptist churches.

Standing timber covered the lower part of the cemetery and in 1940 the stand was sold to Mead. "That's the first time we ever got a little amount of money for the cemetery," said Lewis who still signs the checks. "Tell you the truth, I don't remember how we got all those stumps out, most of them probably just rotted."

With the treees down and the grass up, mowing became a community event. "Everybody would bring their lawnmowers...just the plain old lawnmowers, no power to them."

Workdays, at least from a child's perspective, could be enjoyable, daughter Carolyn remembers. "Whole families would come and while the parents worked, the children would gather under the trees and play...and shell peanuts."

Lewis has enjoyed every bit of the cemetery upkeep, even the hard labor. "When we got in tough spots, we just worked that much harder."

One thing that really makes her proud is the perpetual care fund she estabished. First, she identified all the families with loved ones buried there. "Then I started calling the families to enlist their help. Those I couldn't call, I mailed out letters. I can still remember licking all those stamps," she said. "Nobody had much to give, we realized that, but if everybody gave a little, it could keep us going." "Used to," she said, "we didn't have any official papers or such, but Lord-a-mercy, now we are a non-profit corporation."

When the road to the cemetery needed widening, Lewis went to every property owner to enlist their support. "All but one gave us permission, so we widened the road in all but one place."

Lewis knows a lot of the family history and geneoglogy of those buried at the cemetery, In fact, the first person buried there was her great-grandfather, Alfred Stillwell. Her husband, Ernest, is also buried there and her tombstone is already in place next to his.

For seeing that the cemetery fund got organized and for her years of dedicated service to the cemetery, her nephew Bud Lewis felt she should be honored. "Bud was in bad health but he wanted to see her recognized before he died," said Buchanan whose brother, T.C. Lewis, helped set up the Nov. 6 ceremony. Just 15 short days later, Bud Lewis, with full military honors, was laid to rest at that same cemetery where he had watched his aunt lovingly care for each handful of dirt and each blade of grass.

Back to Archive: 01-06-00.