Remembering the fallen at a history lesson in plain sight

May 20-It's a history lesson hiding in plain sight.

The Sticklin Greenwood Memorial Park hosts the remains of veterans of one of the country's oldest wars, the American Civil War.

Those veterans and many others will be honored once again this Memorial Day weekend at the local cemetery.

The once dilapidated cemetery that has been transformed into a gleaming gem of a final resting place is located on the west side of Centralia near Fords Prairie Elementary School. It will host a Memorial Day ceremony starting at noon on Saturday, May 23.

The event marks one of the few to be held at the site since a committee led by city officials, Centralians and relatives of those laid to rest on the land successfully restored the grounds.

The Sticklin Greenwood Memorial Park was rededicated just four years ago on Memorial Day weekend 2022.

"Centralia is sitting on a history lesson," Restoration Committee Chair Marveen Rohr said. "We believe that."

As in previous years, local American Legion members and the Legion Riders will participate in the ceremony that will include a traditional 21-gun salute and a flag raising. In honor of active duty, retired and deceased soldiers, a member of each military branch will help raise the flag of their branch along with Old Glory and the Washington state flag.

For Rohr, the Saturday ceremony is a return to tradition, to a time she recalls when young families spent their Memorial Day weekend at a local cemetery in remembrance of those who have fallen.

The local cemetery also represents a personal connection for Rohr. Many generations of her family members were laid to rest on the grounds, and each Memorial Day she thinks especially of a childhood friend interred there who lost his life fighting in Vietnam.

"We sat on the front steps and traded comic books," she said.

For her, a period of time when the grounds had been declared abandoned and the gates closed meant she was cut off from family and friends.

"It reached a point where the gates were locked in this traditional cemetery," Rohr said during a recent Centralia City Council meeting. "Those who wanted to go in and do that pursuit of flowers that was so common in another time, and still some now, that was all denied."

The Sticklin Greenwood Memorial Park, which Rohr recalls as "like probably no other in the nation," is well known for the stark-white, casket-sized headstones of its graves. Originally founded and maintained by the Sticklin family, it was neglected by former owner John Baker, who made headlines for regular run-ins with the law before eventually giving up ownership.

The grounds were considered abandoned for many years, and Washington state law prohibited entry to locals who hoped to visit family and friends.

In 2019, Rohr and other local residents, with the help of state Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, spurred the passage of a new law that allowed the state to reopen abandoned cemeteries. According to previous reporting by The Chronicle, the City of Centralia received $250,000 from the state in 2018 to purchase the abandoned grounds and another $500,000 in 2019 to fund its restoration.

Rohr said once then and again last week when speaking to the Centralia City Council that the Sticklin Greenwood Memorial Park is like a piece of fine silver. It just needs some polish.

It has received much of that polish since 2019 after Centralians organized work parties to address the grounds. During that same time, as volunteers cut back overgrown plants and sought to identify each grave, they discovered the grounds held many more than the 2,000 graves they knew about.

It turns out Sticklin Greenwood Memorial Park is likely host to between 7,000 and 8,000 grave sites and hundreds of deceased veterans serving in American wars back to its most deadly, the American Civil War, and every conflict since.

According to Rohr, veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War are side by side in Greenwood. The cemetery also hosts many others who served in other ways: one Rosie the Riveter, many Gold Star families and Boy Scouts that volunteers believe may have earned the rank of Eagle Scout.

Rohr and others hope the next step of restoration can be centered around identification. The cemetery hosts roughly 500 known veterans, but volunteers believe there are likely more that have gone unidentified.

"We'll be probably coming back to you with a plan on how we can start the process to do that identification," Rohr told the City of Centralia, which owns the cemetery.

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