SHELBY — The 118-year-old mausoleum at Shelby’s Oakland Cemetery is crumbling.
Damage from water and ice has caught up to the aging structure over the past few years, raising the need for imminent action. What course of action comes next is now in the hands of the Shelby Oakland Cemetery Association Board of Trustees.
Board member Steve McLaughlin said fencing was placed around Ohio’s second oldest community mausoleum earlier this year as its east towers began to crumble.
“The city actually identified some safety concerns as well from its standpoint,” McLaughlin said when the board met Monday afternoon. “That kind of forced us to expedite what we needed to do.”
He said local resident Joe Lykins, who owns Buckeye Barn Salvage LLC, recently took down the mausoleum’s east towers to address the safety concerns. Lykins has volunteered to help take down the structure’s west towers, likely during late spring or early summer.
The Oakland Cemetery Association in June launched a fundraising campaign aimed at raising $300,000 to replace the aging structure.
As of November, McLaughlin said about $4,300 has been raised thus far. But fundraising efforts recently received a major boost. He said a grant request through the Milliron Foundation was approved in November — the total award was $130,000.
“We absolutely appreciate the generous donation that the Milliron Foundation has provided,” said John Ensman, the board’s vice president.
Below are photos taken Monday afternoon of the Oakland Cemetery mausoleum. Credit: Hayden Gray
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Previous Reporting on Shelby Mausoleum
Special conditions with grant funds
The $130,000 from the Milliron Foundation does come with special conditions, Ensman said. As it stands, the grant funds are eligible to be used toward constructing a structure that would enclose the existing mausoleum.
“It would be a decorative structure that would go overtop the mausoleum,” he said. “We have a design that would be very attractive. It would have stone associated within its design. It’s been well though out.”
But McLaughlin said the board’s ultimate goal is to replace the structure as close to the 1907 build as possible.
Finding a mason that is capable of the project’s scope of work has been challenging. But Ensman said he’s planning to meet soon with a mason out of Shiloh who has performed some work on the mausoleum along Shelby-Ganges Road in Richland County.
If a mason can take on the project, Ensman said the board plans to go back to the Milliron Foundation to ask for an addendum to the eligible uses of the grant funds awarded.
In the meantime, McLaughlin said fundraising will continue in an effort to reach the association’s $300,000 goal.
Donation information
McLaughlin said Chuck Kilgore, accountant for the Oakland Cemetery Association, is the point of collection for all donations related to the mausoleum.
If donations are made by check, it is asked they be made payable to the Oakland Cemetery. The memo line should include a note specifying the donation is intended for the mausoleum fundraiser. Checks may be dropped off at Kilgore’s office at 47 E. Main St.