Mansfield Cemetery fights to keep its legacy alive

MANSFIELD — Mansfield Cemetery, a resting place for more than 180 years, faces an uncertain future as burials decline and cremation rates rise.

Administrator Pam Bautz said the facility handles between 300 and 400 burials a year. That number dropped after COVID-19 as cremation grew more popular, which cut into the funding.

She said the last two years have hit Mansfield Cemetry especially hard.

“This is one of my hardest years I have had to get through financially,” Bautz said. “It’s scary for our future.

“I don’t know that people always realize the amount of acreage we have to take care of, the amount of yard that is out here.”

Mansfield Cemetery covers roughly 88 acres, which the staff maintains every week.

Funding limits cemetery work

Funding exists for cemetery restoration and development, but not for day-to-day operations, Bautz said.

“As cemeteries, we are required by law how we divide money that comes in,” she said.

Lot sales occur when someone purchases a space at the cemetery. While families pay for both the lot and the burial, Bautz said the cemetery can only use the burial money.

By law, the lot sale money must go into investments for the future. She said that even if she sells 100 lots in a month, she can’t access all that money.

This brings her back to the question of how many burials take place each month — a number that continues to diminish.

Mansfield Cemetery operates as a privately owned cemetery. Bautz said some cemeteries operate publicly and receive tax dollars, but Mansfield Cemetery doesn’t.

“We’re kind of on our own,” she said. “It has worked for 180 years, but that many years ago, they didn’t think we would be here battling what we are.”

She said nobody talked about cremation back then, so the issues of today never came up when Mansfield Cemetery began.

Cemetery upgrades on hold

Bautz has served as the Mansfield Cemetery administrator for the past 10 years.

She launched a renovation program a few years ago, spending the first year assessing the cemetery and identifying needed improvements.

As part of her renovation program, Bautz prioritized road repairs. She said crews hadn’t touched the roads in 15 to 20 years before she took over. She also started a tree program to remove storm and wind damaged trees.

Some repaving has been completed in recent years, but funding shortages forced a pause.

“Nobody has done major developments to this cemetery since roughly the 1960s, until me,” Bautz said.

Many of the large mausoleums have trust accounts that families created years ago, still provide funding. Others have no funding at all.

“We had somebody actually cut the doors off one mausoleum and steal them,” Bautz said. “These are things that we just don’t have the funds to go forward with as fast as we want to.”

Expansion plan helps Mansfield Cemetery

“The expansion was a total fluke,” Bautz said. “It was something where I knew if I can’t afford to do smaller things, how can I do this?”

A sloped section at the back of the cemetery worried Bautz, who wasn’t sure how she would ever fix it. She said she wanted to address the section of land with the cemetery slowly running out of space.

“I have 10 to 15 generations that are buried in this cemetery,” she said. “People want to be buried with their loved ones and I want to make sure they can be.”

One day Kokosing Construction Company showed up on her door step with dirt it needed to dump. Bautz said the cemetery saved Kokosing from hauling it far away.

“It has been a great blessing,” Bautz said.

It is a two-year project with a specific amount of dirt that Bautz described as “ungodly.” Thanks to Kokosing, Mansfield Cemetery doesn’t have to pay for the dirt and can use it at its own discretion.

The dirt will fill the slanted hill and even it out, creating more room for future burials.

Bautz said the project won’t solve every problem, but it will give Mansfield Cemetery room to serve families for generations to come.

Welcoming the community with fresh ideas

Bautz said she has several ideas for the future of Mansfield Cemetery.

Many cemeteries of the same age have already embraced certain activities she said, such as movies on the hill, trick-or-treating, 5K run/walks and more.

This mindset is why the Mansfield Cemetery decided to host the first Miss Ohio Scholarship program 5k run/walk.

“I want people here,” Bautz said. “I want people to enjoy it, not just to be a sad place. It doesn’t always have to hold sad memories.”

One section of the cemetery features history from the Memorial Day parade, the grandstand.

“Families would sit in the stands and speakers would be on the hill across from them,” she said. “I have heard so many stories from those days.”

Since then, the parade has shifted to downtown, but Bautz said she has had many people ask if she will ever bring it back to the cemetery.

She recently found the original brass plaques that used to hang across the front and said she has plans to place those back on the front and revamp the section to make it a memorial for what it once was.

She said she wants the community to come to the cemetery and feel that it is beautiful.