Prospect Hill Still Reeling from Last Year's Storm

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speaking of whether it was not quite a year ago.
A horrible tornado hit series of them, as you recall
if you lived here at the time, and much of
the elk Corn or a big part of the Elkhorn
area was devastated, including Prospect Hills Cemetery just you know,

(00:22):
west there on Maple and there was so much damage
and they're still dealing with it now. This is Look,
this is not one of the big for profit cemeteries.
This is a smaller one and I want to get
some information out there to see if we can all
help a little bit. And Roy Schroeder joins us for
a bit, a member of the Prospect Hill Cemetery Board. Roy,

(00:44):
good morning, it's good to have you on.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you for having me on.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
You bet you just lost a ton of well stones,
monuments overturned and a ton of tree damage. What's it
been like now We're going on eleven months here. What's
the status now?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, the cemetery has put pretty much put back to
where it was as far as all the stones. We
had such great help with different monument companies around town
and in Fremont that came out right away and it
was within weeks of Memorial day, and so they made

(01:23):
offers to come out and for reduced costs and stuff,
but the cemetery took on those costs just because we
were trying to, you know, help with things. But that
first weekend was tremendous because we had so many people
coming out to help chainsaws and equipment and everything to

(01:43):
try to do the initial clean up. And since then
it's been trying to take down but broken up trees
and just continuing to try to clean the cemetery up.
And so we got it back up now where you know,
everything looks fine except all the trees are gone, and

(02:05):
so it really changed the looks of it.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Was pretty much they were pretty much all leveled right,
all the trees.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Well, especially on that I'd say the east half of
the cemetery. The west half is the older part and
a lot of large old trees, but the cemetery stayed
far to the east end of the Tornado state on
the far east end of the cemetery.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well as far as the monument's going now, they are
officially I guess the responsibility of the of the of
the family.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Or the owner, right, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
But some people I'm sure weren't able to come up
with the hundreds of dollars that it took and you've
still got the numbers are pretty astonishing really when you
talk about thirty thousand dollars for restoration of monuments and
then the debris clean up. So what's the what's the
need right now? What can people do to help?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, right now, it's really monetary. The cemetery really used
up a lot of the funds that we use for
our maintenance and that yearly maintenance, the mulling and all that.
And so with all of the help that we got
and everything, the biggest part of the damage, we still

(03:21):
have some bigger trees that are getting taken down now
because right after the tornado then we had that hundred
mile an hour within so the poor tree companies were this,
I know, devastated, and so really right now we're just
trying to recoup funds and to pick up funds for
future perpetual care and so we're you know that that's

(03:44):
we're just trying to get the word out now to
let folks know, well, this.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Is a small, non nonprofit cemetery and as beautiful and
I know the families share a ship and like this community.
Early as you probably know is eager to help often
in many ways. What is there a phone number, a
website folks can go to or to help out or what?

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, the funeral home there next to the cemetery, it's
Richmuth's Funeral Home. They have it on their website and
and on and then through their phone phone number four
O two two eight nine two two two two that
if if folks would want to help, they can try

(04:25):
try either one of them. The cemetery is a nonprofit,
so we're all volunteer, and so are the folks there
at the funeral home. But so be sure to give
us a little bit of grace when it comes to
making phone calls because they're running their business as well.
But anything that that folks would would be able to

(04:45):
help with monetarily. Now is really the main thing?

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Are you replacing trees?

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, we'll be looking at trying to do that. Come
to fall, we're still just trying to get our bearings
as far as you know, how much more trees we
got to take out and that. But then we'll be
looking at trying to set up a plan for you know,
replacing trees and so on and so forth that that
folks can you know this would all help to go

(05:14):
toward uh putting putting new trees up if we can right.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Thanks for the time man uh, I know people will
reach out to health. I appreciate the info this morning.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Good Luck Well, thank you very much for having us
be able to get out there. We really appreciate the help.