Family Stories I Want My Children to Remember - The Burial

My grandmother began her teaching career in a one room school house in a small community in western Jack County known as Berwick during the 1930's.  She told me there were only thirteen students in the school, which was located across the road from Winn Hill Cemetery.

One day while conducting class, my grandmother looked out of the window and noticed a small entourage entering Winn Hill Cemetery with a small casket.  It was a cold gray day.  The wind was howling across the rocky landscape.

My grandmother instructed her class to get up and put on their coats.  She marched the entire school outside, across the road and into the cemetery, where they joined the small burial group.  Reverently all of the students participated in a small graveside service for a young boy they did not know.  They sang a hymn, listened to the pastor's words about life and death, then prayed.

After the service was completed and the grave was covered, the students returned to their studies in the little school house.  The grieving parents and pastor thanked my grandmother and her students for participating in the graveside service.

When my grandmother first shared this story with me I was a little boy.  It was one of many stories I treasured hearing her tell.  Almost every time I accompanied her to Winn Hill Cemetery I asked her to share it with me again.  When I first heard the story as a child, I asked her why she had taken her class over to attend a funeral of someone they did not know?  She responded with, "Well... these people were burying their son.  It just didn't seem right for them to be out there in the cold all by themselves.  We went to the cemetery to be there with them.  It was a lesson for my class... to know the importance of helping people during difficult times".

According to my grandmother, most of the time when a death occurred in the Berwick Community back during the early 1900's, my great-grandmother would go help prepare the body for burial, while my great-grandfather and other men in the community would go to the cemetery and begin digging a grave.  A death in the community meant people pulled together to help each other.  These people leaned on their faith and each other to get through tough times.