January 18, 2024 at 7:00 a.m.

REVAMPED!

Sacred Heart volunteers help revive their parish’s cemetery

DANIEL PALM (l.) and Dick Popp, along with Len Marigliano (not pictured), are part of the Building and Grounds Committee for Sacred Heart Parish in Stamford. (Emily Benson photo)

By Emily Benson | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

Daniel Palm snakes through the grounds of Sacred Heart Cemetery in Stamford. He points as he walks, casting a gentle arm to explain various plots or a section of the landscape.

On paper, it might not be the most ideal day for a stroll — small piles of snow still cover the cold grounds from the last week’s storm, while the overcast sky sprinkles a few remaining flurries through the whipping wind. Fortunately, the weather is no match for the beauty of the cemetery itself.

Since 2018, Palm, 80, has been spearheading the revival of his parish’s 1,700-plot cemetery (currently with 1,200-active plots). Along with two fellow Building and Grounds Committee members, Dick Popp and Len Marigliano, the trio has been working to — ironically enough — bring their cemetery back to life.

“From the physical, financial and administrative point of view, it really was in chaos,” Palm said.

Dick Popp and Daniel Palm using the cemetery's new mapping software, part of the extensive renovations.

Over five years, Sacred Heart Cemetery has undergone a total makeover, from updated record keeping to physical maintenance and grave organization. The project totaled just over $66,000, with $51,400 in grant money coming from the Robinson-Broadhurst Foundation in Stamford.

It was a massive undertaking, Palm said, one that he didn’t quite know he would be signing up for.

“When the old funeral director retired (in 2018), the new director decided it wasn’t appropriate for him as director to represent the families of those he’d be doing the (grave) markings of … so the three of us from the Building and Grounds Committee said we’ll take over the marking of graves, not realizing what this involved,” he laughed.

Palm and the crew quickly realized how much the cemetery had been let go. Graves were overgrown, with some monuments tipping or a few fully fallen over; the ground was uneven, making it unsafe to walk, and shrubs were scattered around the space, half-dead and eaten by the local deer.

“We said this really is not acceptable as a sacred place where our friends and relatives are being buried,” he said. Palm’s parents are buried along the outside edge of the cemetery, along with Popp’s wife, Shirley. “We approached the current priest at that time and said can Buildings and Grounds take this over, we want to do some major improvements.”

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Palm broke down the cemetery’s renovations into three phases. In the first phase, Building and Grounds (along with plenty of dedicated volunteers) removed over 50 shrubs, cut back 800 feet of border bush, planted seven maple trees, spread over 45 yards of topsoil, seed and mulch to even the ground, installed over 400 feet of split-rail fence, uncovered 100 small ground-level monuments, and installed section signs to organize the cemetery.

“People would say, I know my mother’s buried up there but I don’t know where she is,” Palm said, “so we installed section signs and put up a map, and then people wouldn’t have to walk through the whole cemetery.”

In the last two phases, the crew installed a kiosk with a map and cemetery information, purchased a trimmer, riding mower and blower for maintenance — and hired a new member to take on the upkeep — and reset a whopping 90 monuments to stand upright.

Daniel Palm looks over the cemetery's new kiosk.

Palm noted that the work couldn’t have been done without community help: “This was done primarily with volunteer effort,” he said. One Sacred Heart parishioner volunteered his company’s excavator equipment and helped with renovations for no charge. Another local tree service company, the Tree Amigos, donated machinery and manpower to help haul away old brush for free.

Lastly, Building and Grounds purchased the Cemetery Information Management System (CIMS), a grave mapping software to organize their burial plots. Palm said that the church’s old record keeping system was proving to not only be outdated, but inaccurate.

“No matter what the records say, they’re irrelevant,” Palm said. “The records (could) say that Sam Jones is in plot 17, but his monument is in plot 14, so he’s really in plot 14.”

Palm hired Stamford local Michael Smith, previously an engineer, to help take on the project, and gained a big assist from Michael’s father, Ken Smith. Palm and Ken realized they would have to start from scratch, and went through 1,450 grave plots measuring each space and assuring each grave was assigned correctly.

If there were any discrepancies about a person’s burial, the duo would search through church records, or go through old obituaries in newspapers, some dating back to the 1970s, to see if a person was really buried at Sacred Heart. Once everything was collected, Michael could enter it into the software. The overhaul took a year and a half to complete.

Daniel Palm (center, blue shirt) and volunteers/workers fill in ground depressions.

Palm says that the system is now “98 percent accurate,” with some surprises still to be filled in. On Jan. 1, a grave was being dug in preparation for a funeral when a wooden casket was hit. “I go up there and sure enough … where the grave digger was to dig there was an unknown burial and a wooden casket — but that was due to past record keeping, or lack thereof.”

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For the past 15 years, Palm has been chairing the Building and Grounds Committee after first joining as a member when he and his wife, Linda, moved back to the Stamford area and joined Sacred Heart in 2000. Since the renovations, the work he and his crew have done for the cemetery hasn’t gone without praise.

“We actually had a gentleman … give us a $500 donation and a letter that said compared to when I was last up there 10 years ago, that cemetery is a totally different place, and my relatives’ graves really look decent,” Palm said.

“I was so impressed by what he has done,” said Amy Bryant, executive director of Albany Diocesan Cemeteries, who has helped field questions for Palm on diocesan cemetery protocol. “If every cemetery had a Daniel Palm, we would be in amazing shape.”

Other parishioners or families of loved ones in the cemetery have reached out to compliment the changes; a moment of gratitude for making a loved one’s resting place a little nicer.

Palm said: “It looks like somebody cares.”