Two years ago, I posted video of Vick Cemetery after a heavy rain, water rushing across the cemetery’s surface into the roadside culvert. Then-new wooden plugs showed the perilous proximity of graves to the edge of the ditch. Eight months ago, I wrote about erosion of the road itself. The situation has not gotten better.

Prior to Lane Street Project’s demands for better care of Vick, the ditch was regularly allowed to become choked with weeds and sweetgum saplings. (Such as what you can now see along Odd Fellows and Rountree Cemeteries.) As the ditch lies within the public right-of-way (indeed, the ditch exists because of the city’s decision to leave open culverts along this stretch of Bishop L.N. Forbes Street), the city is responsible for its maintenance.

In late 2022 or early 2023, either the Cemetery Commission or the Public Works Department treated the ditch alongside Vick Cemetery with a hardcore defoliant, which killed every shred of vegetation and created a moonscape-like strip of land . Unfortunately, no erosion control followed and, predictably, the cemetery’s edge is further slipping away.

Senior Force member Castonoble Hooks took this photo yesterday when he and a helper were mowing Odd Fellows.

I urge you to appeal to City Council to address this situation before even more damage is done to Vick Cemetery. The ditch, the road, the driveway, the driveway marker, and the power poles have done enough.