 SavingGraves.com:
Bill Spurlock
By Steve Paul Johnson, October 6, 2000
Bill Spurlock has been caring for cemeteries since he was a child. His
regard for them has led to the creation of "SavingGraves.com"
a website focusing on protection and restoration of cemeteries.
Since its inception, SavingGraves has become like a worldwide "clearing
house" of endangered cemetery reports. Month-after-month, people submit
reports of endangered cemeteries to the site, and Bill posts them online
and coordinates them with people and organizations best suited to take
action.
I hooked up with Bill and asked him some questions:
Steve: What is "Saving Graves"?
Bill: Saving Graves is the leading Internet presence in the battle
for the protection, restoration and preservation of endangered cemeteries
worldwide.
Steve: How did you get into this?
Bill: This is an issue that I've been exposed to all my life.
As a boy, my family would makes several long weekend trips a year from
our home in Michigan down to Allen County, Kentucky where my Dad was born.
My dad always made it a point to spend what little time we could at the
small family cemetery located in the middle of a farm, where his mother's
relatives were buried. We always took the time to do what cleaning and
upkeep on the cemetery that we could and this made a huge impression on
me. One that has stuck with me all my life. Saving graves itself was started
when in searching for some information, I discovered much to my amazement
that there was no single resource on the internet that was providing comprehensive
information in this area. There were a number of sites that might focus
on specific areas or issues, but there was not a single source for someone
to turn to as a good starting point for an overall search. I was inspired
by a number of these websites, to start the original concept behind Saving
Graves. Some sites that comes to mind that was a great inspiration was
the wonderful work that Lois Mauk has done with the Indiana Pioneer Cemetery
Restoration Project and the Save Our Old Cemeteries website that was run
out of Oklahoma.
Steve: How do people benefit from Saving Graves?
Bill: Well, It's fast become somewhat of a portal website for
cemetery preservation issues and it's interesting that the main pages
traffic is not a good indication of the traffic that the site is taking.
I'd say that for every 1 visit that the main page gets, there another
10 to 15 that come into the site from a different page. We've made a real
difference so far with the Endangered Cemetery Reports. As a result of
people submitting information on a specific cemetery, we have played a
part in saving at least three cemeteries, and brought attention to problems
that others have been able to step in and assist. One of the biggest things
that people benefit from is the fact that we offer a "one stop" website
for finding information on just about any location and as more people
are learning about the existence of the website more and more are turning
to it as a first stop in their search for information.
Steve: How long has Saving Graves been running?
Bill: Saving Graves first started back in Feb of this year on
one of the free web space accounts at RootsWeb under the name of Save
Our Old Cemeteries, and in March the name was changed to Saving Graves,
the domain "savinggraves.com" was registered and the site moved
to a larger server.
Steve: Are you the only person running it, or do you have some
helpers?
Bill: At the moment it's only me running the website. However,
it's fast reaching the point where I cannot do everything that needs to
be done on a daily basis and keep the site up to date. For example, I
was just recently forced to make a change to the News Center area where
rather than attempt to keep up with the daily updated needed I replaced
that with links to several news sources. This freed up a little time for
me, but as a result the site lost the ability to have an "archive" of
past stories. Visitors are still getting the same news from the same sources,
but I'm no longer updating that area by hand.
Steve: Do you have some means of learning about endangered cemeteries,
or do you rely solely on your visitors?
Bill: For the most part, I've been relying on the sites visitors
to inform me of the endangered cemeteries. The primary source for this
is, of course, the Endangered Cemetery Reports, but at the same time many
people will email me to let me know about a specific situation. However,
over the last month as the site has been becoming more known I find that
I'm getting numerous contacts from reporters working on stories involving
cemetery issues. For example, I did a series of interviews on a situation
currently taking place in Michigan involving the clean up of a neglected
cemetery that had I not been contacted by a reporter from The Detroit
News I would never have known about.
Steve: If I learn that a cemetery is being destroyed, how do I
get that information on Saving Graves?
Bill: By far the best thing you can do is to submit an Endangered
Cemetery Report on the situation. This will get the information to me
quickly, and the report form has been designed to get all of the needed
information not only to me, but to the others that I'll contact regarding
the situation.
Steve: Does Saving Graves normally take action when it receives
news of an endangered cemetery?
Bill: Yes, what I do is upon receiving an Endangered Cemetery
Report the first thing that I want to do is to get that report online
in as quick a time as possible. I tell people that they can expect it
to take upward of 3 days under normal conditions, but in all reality I
try to make every attempt to get the report live in under 24 hours. Once
the report is live, I then have a form letter that the report is included
as a part of that introduces Saving Graves and goes into a little detail
on what it's doing, and why they have been contacted. This letter will
go out by email to any number of people or groups that are in a position
either to directly assist in the situation, or can direct the report to
those that can. Where possible, these letters will go out to various law
enforcement agencies, the state Attorney Generals office, State, County
and local historical or Genealogical societies, and the like.
Steve: How does one go about gaining protection of an endangered
cemetery?
Bill: Good question, and one that is nowhere near as simple as
you might think. The obvious answer is to make use of the various laws
in your given state where possible, keeping in mind that the laws of every
state are vastly different and not all states have laws regarding the
various different problems that I see come up on a daily basis. But the
real problem that stand out far and above anything else is that fact that
in many, many cases it's not the lack of a law but getting that law enforced.
There are a number of reasons as to why the laws are not enforced, but
every day I am informed of this taking place. The best example that I
can give you is one that I use quite often involving the sheriff of Adair
County, Kentucky who when presented with a situation that was without
question in violation of Kentucky state law responded by stating "This
is MY county and I make the laws here." In order to really get the protection
of your cemetery you have to be willing to fight for it. You have to be
willing to spend a great deal of time, energy and in some cases money.
You have to be willing to go directly to your State Attorney Generals
office for help. You have to be willing to bring the situation to the
attention of the media. One of the things that I am most proud of is in
this short amount of time that I've been doing this, Saving Graves has
played a part in saving no less than 3 endangered cemeteries around the
Untied States that I am aware of. It has also had a influence in new laws
in several states and more to come next year. It is making a difference,
but it's only one small part of the entire process. It involves a partnership
of many working together to a common goal of saving a vital and irreplaceable
part of history.
Steve: What can we expect from Saving Graves in the coming new
year?
Bill: The next year looks to be exciting for Saving Graves. Plans
currently call for not only adding more nations, but to provide translations
of the web site into several additional languages. In the past month,
the site has been visited by people from over 50 different nations worldwide.
I want to bring more people into it to assist in a number of areas. For
example, I'm going to look at getting people in different nations to take
over the pages for their countries. Roughly just under 1/3 of our traffic
comes from Canada so I'd like to see that area of the site expanded, and
they will be one of the first translations that we do.
- Steve Paul Johnson
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