Approximately 15 stone monuments damaged

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

Cemeteries are often considered a sacred resting place, a sanctuary to grieve and visit lost family and friends. Usually, those consecrated plots of land dotting cities and countryside are respected. Unfortunately, there are those few times when cemeteries are not treated with the proper care from visitors and damage is done.

In an unfortunate crime scene, Hay Creek Cemetery, located between Sebeka and Davies, was vandalized during the week of October 27 leading up to Halloween. The cemetery was an easy target as it sits off the beaten path on 450th Street in Blowers Township near the northeastern corner of Otter Tail County.

While it’s been speculated at who was behind the vandalism, it is not currently known who the vandal or vandals may have been. It can still be seen, however, the damage that was done to around 15 stone monuments within the 2-acre cemetery lot. There doesn’t seem to be one family, area, or even time frame of vandalism, so it’s likely that the damage was done at random.

“There’s some that were knocked over that were really old,” said caretaker Shane Siltala. “There’s stones in there that are 100 years old, so there were some real old ones as well as some newer ones, it’s a mix, kind of sporadic.”

Siltala said that he had reported the damage to the Otter Tail Sheriff’s Office so that there would be a report on file in case the vandals choose another cemetery to deface. He said that he was glad to hear that there hadn’t been any others when he called it in.

“We reported it just so it was on file in case other cemeteries had the same problem,” he said. “It didn’t sound like any other cemeteries had reported any vandalism at that time. As far as I’ve heard they haven’t found out who did it.”

As the Hay Creek Cemetery Association waits on estimates for repairs, Siltala said that costs would certainly reach into the thousands of dollars due to the expensive nature of grave stones and their repair. The Cemetery Association will come together for their annual meeting in May of 2025 to discuss their plan of action for the repairs, but until then they are welcoming donations.

“We’ve contacted a monument guy that works on them to get an estimate on what it will cost,” said Siltala. “We haven’t gotten an official estimate, but it’s going to be a lot of money to fix them. The cemetery doesn’t have funds available to do that. That’s the problem too. A lot of these old stones, there’s no family left around to even contact, so it’s pretty much relying on donations to try and fix them.

“One of these tall monuments, those big ones, they’re many thousands of dollars to go buy one,” he continued. “Right now I don’t know how many would need to be replaced or how many he can repair, I have no idea. Some of them have reinforcing rods in there, I’m guessing they tipped over the ones that were weak, hence why a lot of them are older ones. They probably would have tipped over a lot more.”

While volunteers of the cemetery are fairly snowbound when it comes to visiting or working on anything in the cemetery this winter, people are encouraged to donate to the Cemetery Association to fund the repairs when spring comes. Donations can be sent to:

Hay Creek Cemetery Association

62213 450th Street

Sebeka, MN 56477

When spring rolls around, the Cemetery Association hosts a cleanup day each year at the end of April. Though the date changes every year, volunteers can join the Hay Creek Cemetery Crew, Sebeka group on Facebook to get involved and watch for the annual cleanup date.