Volunteers learn history as they clean up Foster-Powell cemetery

Published 12:00 am Sunday, August 25, 2024

Most people drive past Multnomah Park Cemetery – that’s at S.E. 82nd Avenue of Roses and Holgate Boulevard, diagonally across the street from the south end of Eastport Plaza – without giving it a second thought.

But on Friday, August 2, some two dozen volunteers – along with specialists from METRO Parks and Nature – gathered there from across the city to learn more about this historic graveyard, while tidying up monuments and gravestones.

“Today is one of a regular series of events that METRO Parks and Nature holds, in which we invite members of the community to come help us tend cemeteries,” explained METRO Parks and Nature Content and Marketing Specialist Hannah Erickson.

“In this case, ‘tending’ this means doing things like cleaning grave markers, picking up litter, and making sure that grave markers aren’t sinking into the grass to the point where they can’t be seen,” Erickson continued. “Actually, a lot of it is just old-fashioned ‘elbow grease’ with soapy water, to help keep things clean!”

Asked why people volunteer for this duty, Erickson told THE BEE, “Many of the people who come out to these events say they’re interested in helping us preserve our historic cemeteries, because it helps them connect with this region’s history – a in a very personal way.”

While cleaning a headstone, one of the volunteers – Meadow McGalliard – mentioned that she, and some of the other Portland State University students who came, are starting a campus club called the PSU Death Café. “It’s an environment where people come together and we promote talking about any topic around death; a difficult topic.

“But, this is something that everyone has to deal with! Doing community activities, like this, is another part of Death Café, and death positivity,” McGalliard said.

Of interest to some volunteers was that the almost-ten-acre Multnomah Park Cemetery was established in 1888, when the area was quite rural. It was founded with some of the settler families who lived nearby at the time, including Oliver Lent and his family.

Respectfully, the volunteers grave-tended each site before moving to the next.

To find out more about METRO Parks and Nature and its activities, go online – https://tinyurl.com/bdurjwkv

Now, watch over a dozen volunteers in action – giving caring personal attention to the graves in this historic cemetery in Inner Southeast Portland – in a brief and exclusive BEE VIDEO: https://youtu.be/oxv6o7yOT9o