It’s a Saturday afternoon, March 24, and Wayne Sikes is at work.He says he’s used to being busy, so he takes care of his community’s church.
The Bethsaida “Y” Cemetery is not peaceful and quiet all the time. A busy railroad passes regularly. See the lighted railroad crossing arm that has stopped traffic at the upper right?
Notice how the one family grave site will involve careful mowing, weeding and precise care. Wayne Sikes looks on, ready to accomplish the task. To do the entire cemetery will likely take 10 hours one of these days.
The blanket covered grave in Bethsaida Cemetery is colorful and meaningful but cemetery caretaker Wayne Sikes knows it will be a problem when he becomes ready both to mow and weed.Therefore,adding ground items are not encouraged.
Bethsaida “Y” Church member and cemetery caretaker Wayne Sikes walks with determination to inspect the church’s cemetery as he does regularly.
Wayne Sikes is a church member any congregation would be pleased to have. He works for his Bethsaida “Y” Baptist church with determination and accomplishment now over a period of 80 years.
Any county cemetery as ancient as Bethsaida “Y”’s cemetery will have small weathered stones in its grounds which mark a burial spot. The is going back to the cemetery’s 1878 starting existence. That’s some 146 years.
WAYNE SIKES:
Wayne Sikes is a young 80 years old here in the Bethsaida “Y” Community. He’s a retired cabinet maker, a skill that, he tells, brought him a comfortable life in this equally comfortable community.
Blessed with a workshop nearby that he could walk to whenever he needed to get a cabinet built, he’s lived in Bethsaida “Y” all his life.
‘That was perfect,” he said recently. “I’m not a 9 to 5 employee. I work on my time.”
And he does mean work. For although retired and no more cabinets to build, do you think he stays at home? Think again. He takes care of the Bethsaida “Y” Baptist Church and the Bethsaida “Y”Cemetery as well.
The cemetery’s just a walk away from the church, but Wayne does have an ace up his sleeve. He has a good pick-up, and if he needs to go to town for anything, he does. But mostly, everything he needs is in this community.
But at the moment, he has a concern. “We have now only some 12 to 13 members attending Sunday. I can remember once when there were 180 people here for a service. I don’t know. Maybe we are in the last minutes of the end of times,” Sikes tells.
He makes his point simply. The church he cleans has certainly been around. It dates to 1878 and then moved and rebuilt in 1947. Today Dr. Robert Sanders is long term pastor. Gwen Johnson plays the piano. Miss Nancy is song leader. There are no young ones. But the church does a support a young college sophomore who is a granddaughter to Miss Nancy.
Sikes remembers when Bethsaida “Y” was made up of families of farmers. They came to church regularly. Today, the sparsely attended church is rattled by trains passing on tracks only a few yards away.
Sikes’ other big concern is the community’s cemetery. He takes care of it.
Last Saturday afternoon as Sikes was sweeping the sidewalks outside the church, he was thinking the cemetery needed attention next. He was ready to work more.
It’s going to take Sikes about four hours to mow the grass, which is a little strange because in the early day such country cemeteries would have no grass at all. The land and their plots would be scraped and hoed clean, down to the earth.
“They’d have cemetery days once a year. Everyone would come back, bring a hoe and some food for lunch, and go to work cleaning the cemetery grounds. Scraping every grave site clean of grass. That’s no more. Now it’s let the grass grow.”
And today, also, there’s an even more onerous task of taking care. The stones where the grass is growing around will have to be weeded. That may be several stones per plot, not to mention the ornamental mementos placed around. They need trimming, too, to look their best. And just imagine, there are several hundred grave sites here needing individual weeding. That’s about a six hour job.
It’s no wonder decision makers discourage extra decoration around graves. Someone has to trim and clean to keep them cared for.
But that’s not all. Sikes has another concern. People coming to the cemetery with improper intentions will trash the place.
“We used to have big waste receptacles for people to clean and toss. Then, I’d be finding dead animals in the trash barrel or clothing, furniture or other trash from the homes. The other day, someone used their vehicle to bang into the front gate, bending it a bit. So, no more trash receptacles.”
So now one knows why Bethsiada “Y” Baptist Church stands quietly, clean and ready to accept a large number of people for Sunday services. Wayne Sikes is at his job of appreciating his life and that of his Bethsaida “Y” community.