Protect our cemetery history

To the editor:

I am writing regarding the vandalism that occurred at Old Lorimier Cemetery. A cemetery is not just a piece of land with markers. It's our history that we are allowing to be destroyed.

I moved away from Campus, Ill., 35 years ago, and each visit home I always went to the cemetery to visit family or friends that had passed. My entire heritage is buried in that cemetery, and I can look at my grandparents', great-grandparents' and great-great grandparents' graves and tell where they came from and when they died. Now my mom and dad are there with all of their history. As I roam across the cemetery I can't help but feel all my roots that are buried there.

It has been my belief over the years that unless you know where you have been you will never know where you are going. For instance, those headstones reflect not only a family or a friend, but an era. It shows us just how far we have come in this world by our forefathers, and how much further we have to go.

A solution to the problem could be that we need a full-time guard to protect what is rightfully ours and to safeguard this history for future generations.

If we continue to ignore this problem, it will not go away. Just the opposite, it will continue to grow.

MARTHA FEENEY, Jackson