Special collection helps extend Catholic cemetery's life

SALT LAKE CITY — Each grave in the Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery & Mausoleum has a story to tell. There’s William A. Turnier, buried in 2004, who worked for Nabisco and created the Oreo cookie before retiring to Utah from New Jersey; his gravestone boasts an Oreo cookie. James McTernay, who died in 1910, was a local bar owner whose patrons took up a collection to memorialize him with the tallest monument in the graveyard. Then there is Sophia Maria DeCurial, AKA Sylvia Douglas, who died in 1908. Her red rock gravestone states that she was believed to be Etta Place, girlfriend of the outlaw Harry Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid.

"It’s a beautiful cemetery," said Deacon Silvio Mayo, chancellor of the diocese. "We believe that the body is sacred, so with a Catholic burial, the ground is blessed. It’s the environment that the body should be in, in sacred ground. It’s very important to a lot of Catholics to be buried in a Catholic cemetery."

The only Catholic cemetery in Utah, Mount Calvary dates back to 1897, when the Salt Lake City Corporation sold the 19.05 acres to Bishop Scanlan for $1. Since then, several improvements have been made, including construction of a mausoleum, installation of a sprinkling system and digging a well to lessen irrigation costs.

After 113 years, "we’re getting rather full," said Curt Rosentreter, the cemetery director, although several projects are expanding the cemetery’s life.

The first of these is the removal of a huge dirt hill in the northwest corner of the cemetery. The hill was created by decades of dirt excavated from new grave sites and dumped in a heap; the mound was so large that a full-sized tractor sitting on top of it looked like a toy truck atop a child’s sand hill.

"For decades, no dirt was ever hauled out of here, that I can tell," Rosentreter said. To expedite its removal, he sent posters "to every trucking company, excavating company and excavator in the valley" who might want clean fill dirt, but had no response until recently, when he reached a deal to have most of the dirt removed at cost.

Once all the dirt is removed and the area is contoured, the next step will be to determine how to best use the site. Rosentreter expects to hire a professional cemetery planner, who would "work with us on how we can best use the last remaining space," not just the area where the dirt now sits, he said. "There are a variety of different methods."

For example, many people now request cremation rather than a traditional burial; Rosentreter thinks converting the existing retaining wall that’s north of the Mount Calvary mausoleum into a niche wall would accommodate 800 people or more.

"This is longer-term planning," he said. "It’s not something we’re going to do next month or next year."

On a smaller scale, the ongoing replacement of curbing has allowed for more grave sites as some of the roads were reconfigured to allow for more grave sites. This project has been paid for by the annual special collection for Mount Calvary, which was reinstituted several years ago to help fund the aging graveyard, Rosentreter said. If collection went away, "it would be a hardship," he added. "Some of the things that we’re trying to do would just not happen."

The special collection for Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery will be taken up at parishes along the Wasatch Front the weekend of June 5.