Nineteen graves now marked at Star Cemetery in Goodridge

David and MaryAnn Sjulestad have been in charge of the Star Cemetery mowing for decades now; Dave is also a Township Supervisor. Located east of Goodridge, along the Gully road, MaryAnn has been trying to get unmarked graves in the cemetery officially marked for a few years now. The project has taken quite some time and research as there were graves that were not marked at all and the township book had no traces of, while others had small markers originally provided by funeral homes in which the names had since worn off. MaryAnn said her son, Adam, found a website called www.findagrave.com that provided a lot of needed and necessary information to help get the graves properly marked with names and dates. She says she took the township book, along with the information found on the website, and walked the entire cemetery to determine the locations of the unmarked burial sites. A couple of them were rough estimations, however, as the township had no trace of a few graves, whatsoever, but online stated differently and provided some insight. 

As for the headstones, MaryAnn recalled, “I went to the township years ago with estimates from the funeral home in Thief River Falls. Each headstone would cost about $1000 and we knew we needed 19 of them.” With the cost being very high, the idea of getting at least 4-5 marked a year seemed a bit more reasonable, until the suggestion of yet another website, www.markeverygrave.com, came up. The company out of Texas gave an estimation of 6” x 9” x ½” thick granite name plates costing approximately $22/each. MaryAnn brought the quote back to the township and got approval for the purchase of 19 markers at just over $400 for all.  

Enlisting the help of the STS (Sentencing to Service), a group came out to the cemetery a couple of weeks ago and built wood frames, poured 19 cement slabs and laid the new, permanent stones. The group will be coming back to take the wood frames off and fill each in with dirt. 

What a great community service project worth mentioning! The Sjulestads took on quite a project, but the end result made it all worthwhile.