It’s an Alvarado site of reverence and rich in history, the final resting place for a number of the town’s founding family members, notable residents and at least two outlaws. Many of the headstones in Balch Cemetery date to the 1800s.
Johnson County Sheriff’s Office deputy Jim Sloan and inmate work crew members stumbled upon an unwelcome surprise Friday morning when they arrived to mow and tend the cemetery.
“They told me, ‘Deputy, you’ve got to get over here and see this,’” Sloan said.
Throughout the cemetery, headstones sit pulled forward or knocked from their bases. Busted chunks of other headstones, some more than a century old, litter the grounds.
Walking the ground surveying the damage and pointing out each new find, work crew members shake their heads and mutter opinions of the perpetrators, most of which are unprintable here.
Sloan asked crew members to fan out and count the damaged stones. The preliminary walk-through added up to 103 damaged stones.
The marble head of an angel topping one gravestone and the heads of two lambs atop the graves of two children are missing, tossed elsewhere in the cemetery or taken as souvenirs.
Senterwood Cemetery, adjacent to Balch, sustained some damage, but not as much. One tombstone marks the grave of an unknown slave girl killed by a bear in 1856. Someone, it appears, attempted to pull the stone free but gave up and left it slightly off center.
Sloan oversees the inmate work crew, which performs numerous tasks for various nonprofit organizations throughout the county, including the Johnson County Cemetery Association.
JCCA maintains more than 30 cemeteries in the county, many of which had received little or no care for years before the organization started.
Balch is one of the cemeteries maintained by Sloan and his crew on a regular basis. Sloan said he drove by the cemetery about a week ago to see if it needed mowing, but didn’t get out of his truck.
Sloan said a resident living nearby said he saw some kids around the cemetery recently but couldn’t recall what day it was.
Two lights installed in the cemetery on power poles appear to have been shot out by BB or pellet guns.
The city of Alvarado several years ago agreed to maintain the lights and pay for the electricity, said Doris Lanfear, president of JCCA.
Many of the stones are probably beyond repair, but not all. The problem, Lanfear said, is that the cemetery association has no funds to carry out repairs.
“We operate on all donations, and what money we do have goes toward mowing and maintenance,” Lanfear said.
Lanfear said she fears the cemetery will never be restored unless others donate time and funds to carry out the project.
For information on JCCA, or to get involved or donate, call 817-641-1671.
Alvarado
Related Photos
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Johnson County Sheriff’s Office inmate work crew members survey damage at Balch Cemetery. Workers discovered the damage Friday morning when they arrived to mow the cemetery. From left are Johnny Phillips, Robert Allen Davis, Chris Arthur and Scott Allen Singletary. Matt Smith/Times-Review
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Discussion
Vandals desecrate cemetery
More than 100 headstones damaged, some destroyed
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