SPANAWAY, WA. – For 13 years, Laurie Porter has managed and maintained Bethany Cemetery on the Mountain Highway. She has worked to find the history of people and their families laid to rest there. The cemetery has many early pioneers from the area including many Hudson’s Bay Company descendants.

This week she was very disturbed to find thieves had stolen vases out of all the graves, piling them in a corner of the property and taking the most valuable ones, likely to recycle the metal.

Over the past few months, vandals have ripped faucets off water spigots and broken into the well house taking pipe and causing a water outage at the nearby Lutheran church. The maintenance building was broken into and windows were broken at the church.

The Bethany Cemetery is run by a board of five trustees, only one of which lives nearby.

Laurie said she would like to install surveillance cameras at the site, but their budget is very small and it will likely cost almost $1000. They have a cemetery board meeting coming up on February 20. If anyone would like to help by donating toward getting the video equipment, she said they would be delighted to have the help.

Donations can be made to Bethany Cemetery, PO Box 7173, Kent, WA 98042.

The Post also contact the Zenkers who operate the Roy Cemetery. Mr. Zenker said they have also had similar vandalism and theft problems, even someone trying to dig up some graves looking for metals.

Late this afternoon, the Post visited the Alder Cemetery and it too has had metal vases stolen from the site.

The value of metals has caused a breach in the peace of our loved ones final resting places. This is low and despicable, but then again, who is it that is accepting this material for recycle? They are sad indeed.