Article Photos

Advertisement

GARRISON - Unless you know it's there, the Kloestitz German Congregational Cemetery four miles east of Garrison is just about impossible to find. Nestled just beyond a barbwire-fence gate and a small rolling hill off a lonely gravel road, about the only visitors this seldom-used cemetery sees these days is the group of family that has not only maintained the final resting place of many of their relatives, but improved it as well.

The core group consists of Ed and Bea Arlt of Lake Audubon, Ed's brother Ernie Arlt and his wife, Faye, of Minot, and Carla Brown, Ernie and Faye's daughter, and her husband, Ben, also of Minot. Other family members such as Carla and Ben's daugher Ashley and friends and neighbors also help out from time to time.

This continues a tradition that started for Ed and Ernie Arlt when they were young.

"When we were kids we used to help, then we left, and then our younger brother and our parents did it until they died," said Ed Arlt. "And then when my younger brother died there was nobody else left to do it."

"And so then Ernie and I started, we went out there and we had push mowers that we did the cemetery with," Faye Arlt said.

Ed and Bea would come to the cemetery yearly from their home in Billings, Mont., with a riding mower to help. They moved back from Montana to Lake Audubon north of Coleharbor several years ago.

The group started going out to the cemetery regularly around 1995 and had to put a lot of backbreaking work in just to make it look presentable, because tall grass was among the least of their problems at the time. Badger holes dotted the cemetery and needed to be filled in, which Ed did with his tractor. The gravestones also needed to be shored up and straightened, but first the lilac bushes that were pushing them over in the first place had to be dealt with, a process that literally took years.

"My God we pulled lilacs and lilacs and lilacs," Bea said.

Fence posts were painted, and the rusty barbwire fence that surrounded the cemetery was taken down and replaced with new wire fencing donated by Robert and Hulda Hultz of Minot, who also have family there.

They also make sure there are flowers for the graves each Memorial Day. They alternate buying flowers for the 14 family graves each year and put flowers from previous years on the remaining graves.

"We pick them all up after the Fourth of July, and we bring them home and store them in one of our sheds," Bea Arlt said. "Then Ernie and Faye buy the next year, the 14, then we take the first 14 and we take them to the graves that didn't have any, the ones that are still presentable."

"So now every one of them has flowers," Faye added.

There are a total of 48 graves in the one-acre cemetery.

A substantial project they just completed on the last day of Norsk Hstfest this year was to construct two brick pillars to mark the entrance of the cemetery. The brick for those pillars came from the school in Coleharbor that was severely damaged by straight-line winds in 2006. Ed inquired about the bricks and was told they would be buried, so he took 360 of them home and cleaned every one.

"They said if we wanted them we could come and get them so we hauled them brick by brick," Bea said. "And then (Ed) cleaned each brick. He got them all cleaned and stacked them in my yard for three years."

Since none of them knew how to lay brick, they enlisted the aid of some neighbors - Keith and Danita Hunke, their daughter Emily, and Danita's brother Doug Doerr.

"These are Catholics that done the brick laying," Ed said with a laugh.

"These are Catholics that come down and help, and we all do it. And we're just one big family, that's all," Bea added.

Next year Ed hopes to complete work on some iron gates for the entrance and make some cement marker slabs for a few unmarked graves, and that should about do it for the upgrades to the cemetery.

After that it will be a matter of keeping things looking nice and neat.

With all the practice they now have, it takes a lot less time to maintain the cemetery. When they first started, it took four to five hours, but now with all the improvements to the grounds it only takes 2 1/2 hours.

The way it looks now is a huge improvement from when they first started, and at the end of the day when all the work is done, they enjoy one final family tradition.

"And when we get all done and everything's over with, because we always pack a lunch, we sit and have lunch with our dead relatives," Bea said with a laugh. "But they enjoy it, they seem to. Nobody complains."