Vick Cemetery: Remembered & Restored is a city-sponsored event. If you’d have told me in the dark days at the beginning of this year that this is where we would be come fall, I would have scoffed. Come celebrate progress at Vick Cemetery!
Vick cemetery
Lane Street Project: buy a white rose.
Even if you can’t make the ceremony, you can celebrate the occasion and honor the ancestors with flowers. Each white rose will be placed alongside a large floral arrangement at Vick Cemetery.
Please place your order — early and often — with Braswell’s Flower Shop at (252) 218-4265 or (252) 903-7241 or via CashApp $gr480. Thank you!
Lane Street Project: Vick Cemetery — Remembered and Restored!
Good things have been happening at Vick Cemetery, and the Vick Cemetery Advisory Committee and the City of Wilson invite you to celebrate!
Lane Street Project: trespass.
Yeah. That’s exactly what you think it is. A car … all the way at the back fence of Vick Cemetery. This kind of trespass — and disrespect — continues to happen, though every vehicle that enters has to pass at least one granite pillar emblazoned with the cemetery’s name and climb a curb out of the paved parking lot.
Vick Cemetery is a sacred space. Lane Street Project — and now the City’s Vick Cemetery Advisory Committee — are working hard to restore dignity to this place and raise awareness of its significance and history. We need the community’s help.
Lane Street Project: flowers.
Last month, a New South Associates archaeologist reinterred the fragments of the marble vault-like structure disturbed in Vick Cemetery’s ditch bank in December. I placed new flowers today in honor of this unknown ancestor.
Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2026.
Lane Street Project: the monuments.
When I come home, my first stop is always my father’s grave and then around the corner to Odd Fellows and Vick Cemeteries.
Today, there was something I had to see for myself.
This really is a handsome marker. Deeply incised. Solid. Substantial.
One of the corner markers. Its careful placement, guided by archaeologists, starkly contrasts to the violence that attended the installation of the wooden power pole and the five guy wires that tether it and the adjacent steel pole. I recognize and appreciate the shifts in perspective and commitment among city leadership that brought us to this place.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2026.
Lane Street Project: giant steps at Vick Cemetery.
I agree with Castonoble Hooks. A corner’s been turned. Before today’s work started, I took a brief call from a city official with a run of show — an unthinkable courtesy just months ago. By day’s end, a monument proclaiming the identify of this sacred space stood on high ground, visible on the street from both directions. Two smaller monuments were placed at the western end of the cemetery, and the marble vault unearthed and damaged in December was re-interred. The granite pillars flanking the parking lot — inaccurately labeled and encroaching on Odd Fellows — have been removed, and the third corner marker will be installed later. Additional ground-penetrating radar has been delayed, but remains in the plan.
My thanks to everyone who had a hand in today’s respectful work. Your care is deeply appreciated.
Lane Street Project: Vick Cemetery Advisory Committee appointed.
Lane Street Project: Council to consider Vick Cemetery Advisory Committee charter.
The 13th item on Thursday’s city council meeting agenda is “consideration of approval of creation of a Vick Cemetery Commission [Committee] and Charter.”
Here are the relevant documents:
Lane Street Project: Mother’s Day 2026.
Was a mother buried here?
We will never know, but today we remember and honor all the mothers buried in Vick, Odd Fellows, and Rountree Cemeteries, and vow to continue the search for all lost graves in these grounds.
Photos of the disturbed gravesite in Vick Cemetery and bits of its marble surround taken May 2026 by Lisa Y. Henderson.