Sir Van Johnson’s 9-month update on Western Heights Cemetery Restoration Progress
Scroll left to view the complete photo gallery
Yesterday, I asked Van Johnson what has been accomplished at the Western Heights Cemetery since joining the Constellation of Living Memorials two-year pilot program nine months ago.
The progress at the Western Heights Cemetery has been stellar, conservatively clocking 800 volunteer hours. 40 weeks, assuming only 20 hours/week, but Van has been there nearly every day and has been there all day MANY times running the weed eater (4 batteries x 2 hours each), picking up bricks, unloading bricks, and staging bricks for volunteers. Same with rocks for two rock walls.
LOTS of tree trimming, branch hauling, and stacking in the beginning. Several days of removing low-hanging branches.
Van has received six dump truck loads of woodchips at 6 yards each. He had help with half a truckload, so he moved 5.5 truckloads himself or 33 cubic yards, equaling 297 large wheelbarrow loads (14 cubic feet each) or 462 small wheelbarrow loads (9 cubic feet each).
The 800 hours would only be physical labor, not counting:
* Tours
* Creating and administering 5 Facebook groups and posting content
* Scouring every entry on Find A Grave for WHC and contacting every memorial creator, manager, sponsor, and those who left flowers to locate descendants and family members and maintain a list with contact info and family lines they are descended from or related to.
Also, researching and compiling:
* Cemetery timeline
* Neighborhood timeline
* Cemetery/ neighborhood history written narrative
* Cemetery research sources at Dallas Public Library, Dallas Municipal Archives, etc.
* Causes of death for all "A" and "B" surnames
* General tour script
* Veterans tour script
* Women and children's tour script
And planning the programming for and promoting:
* Veterans Day 2023 Ceremony
* Descendants Day
* Solar eclipse-watching party
* Oak Cliff Earth Day plant sale
* Oak Cliff History Day – in partnership with Preservation Dallas
* Memorial Day ceremony
That's all he could think of on short notice!!!
Also, the Ericksons transcribed every stone, photographed every stone multiple times to get the best lighting, created a consolidated database from four sources, and rediscovered some hidden grave markers. Steve has also done extensive genealogy work and connected many of the families and has created a page on Ancestry for Western Heights Cemetery so people can collaborate on further research. He's also added several entries on Find A Grave and numerous photos.
Previously, Van sent me “Things that I found the most interesting.” Compiled from various internet sources and edited for brevity via Van:
Woodmen Life is a not-for-profit fraternal benefit society founded in 1890, based in Omaha, Nebraska, to make life insurance affordable for everyone.
One of the benefits was grave markers, which in the beginning were distinctively shaped like tree stumps. Activities included philanthropic efforts -- donating $13,000 to victims of the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 -- and various community outreach projects and broadcast interests, including owning the first television station where Johnny Carson worked.
Joseph Root founded Modern Woodmen of America in Iowa in 1883 after hearing a sermon about "pioneer woodsmen clearing away the forest to provide for their families." Taking his surname to heart, he wanted to start a society that "would clear away problems of financial security for its members."
After internal dissension within the MWA, Root was ejected from the organization he had founded. When moving to Omaha, Root decided to start again with a new group he called the Modern Woodmen of the World. He soon dropped the "Modern", and the organization became "Woodmen of the World".
The organization also provided college scholarships for high school students and held summer camps for local youth. By the beginning of the twentieth century, WOW had nearly 1 million members and over 3,000 chapters or ‘lodges’ nationwide. By the 1920s, over one-quarter of American families belonged to some fraternal organization or society.
One visitor to Western Heights Cemetery told us she remembers going as a little girl to the Woodman of the World lodge near the Dallas Zoo several times a week, where her mom would play bingo.
Woodmen of the World began marketing itself as Woodmen Life on June 1, 2015.
The Woodmen of the World had a female auxiliary called the Woodmen Circles from the early 1890s and was absorbed by the Woodmen in 1965.
WOW has had two notably tall headquarters buildings. It used to own a 19-story tower, the tallest building between Chicago and the West Coast at the time of its dedication in 1912. WOW built its current 30-story Woodmen Tower in 1969, the tallest building in Nebraska until the completion of a 45-story Bank Tower in 2002.
The organization played an important role in broadcast history until it was forced to divest itself of these holdings because of its not-for-profit status. In 1922, the society began broadcasting on the radio station "WOAW" with a signal that reached ships in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from its 500-watt (later 1,000-watt, and eventually 5,000-watt) transmitters. In 1926, the station became WOW after the ship, which had held the call sign, was retired from service.
The organization's not-for-profit status was to cause a legal battle over station ownership. In 1943, the station was leased to an independent organization, Radio Station WOW, Inc. The U.S. Supreme Court voided this lease, returning it to the society but keeping the license in the hands of the station. In 1949, the radio station began the television station WOW-TV. Among its first performers was Johnny Carson, who had a daily show called The Squirrel's Nest, where he told jokes, conducted humorous interviews, and staged various skits.
A physical legacy of the organization is "Treestones" or "tree-stump tombstones" marking the grave of a Woodman of the World. The sawed-off tree limbs represent a life cut short. Until the 1920s, membership in the Woodmen of the World provided each member with a tombstone.
From 1890 until 1900, the policy included a headstone. For adults, the stones were made to look like tree stumps and came in various styles and heights. For children, a stack of three logs was typical. Members could select from a variety of headstones offered by the Organization. Plans would be sent to a stonemason near the cemetery where the Woodman was to be buried.
The stump was decorated with various symbols of WOW, including axes, mauls, and other woodworking instruments. Often, you may see a dove of peace with an olive branch. The WOW motto, Dum Tacet Clamet (“Though silent he speaks”), on a round medallion, is used quite often. Sometimes, the phrase “Here Rests a Woodman of the World” is carved somewhere on the stump. During the 1890s, the price of the headstones increased enough that from 1900 until the mid-1920s, members had to buy a $100 rider on their life insurance policy to receive a headstone. Unfortunately, production costs continued rising, and the headstones were discontinued in the mid-1920s.
The organization is still active and has been awarded a rating of A+, the second highest ranking out of 15, for its financial strength and operating performance by A.M. Best. Current Dallas Chapter 1, https://www.woodmenlife.org/chapter/TX1/
Per Van’s vision for continued restoration as of August 11, 2024
My email a couple of days ago said we won't be doing any planting in 2024. That only applied to trees and PLANTS. However, we will be buying SEEDS and scattering them this fall. The species being evaluated are:
Standing cypress
Purple prairie clover
American Basketball Flower
Lemon Mint
Firewheel (previously called Indian blanket)
Milkweed- antelope horns and green
Partridge Pea
Upright prairie coneflower (previously called Mexican hat)
Winecup- annual and perennial
Prairie verbena
Pink evening primrose- early spring
Bluebonnets
Illinois bundle flower
Gayfeather
White prairie clover
Texas yellow star
Green thread
Mealy blue sage
Frostweed
Eryngo
TX Bluebells
Blue Flax. Linux praetense and L. Lewis's
Prairie Parsley
Pitcher Sage
Yellow prairie flax
Missouri Primrose
Van continues, “ It's wayyyyyyyyyy too early to have a plan for the 2025 fall planting. Dependencies:
* Installation and access to a *practical* water source
* Performance of fall 2024 seed plots
* Performance of 50% of current no-mow areas. The no-mow requirement ends in November 2025, and plots will be evaluated. Those with a high percentage of desirable natives will be left as is; those with few desirable and many undesirable plants will be mowed down and available for planting.”
Thank you, Sir Van, you are indeed an extraordinary individual and a great contributor to society!!