Workers prepare another burial site
on the south end of the cemetery.
Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
By Jane Smith
Boynton Beach no longer has single plots to sell in its Boynton Memorial Park Cemetery, and only 300 plots remain at its Sara Sims Cemetery.
That situation raised a policy question: Should Boynton Beach be in the burial business?
The City Commission, led by Mayor Jerry Taylor, decided “no” when that issue was raised at its June 2 meeting.
Taylor favored a staff recommendation to restrict the buyers to Boynton Beach residents or outsiders who have loved ones already buried there.
“I would be for that,” he said, “so that we wouldn’t have people from Boca or Delray buying up our plots. I would say keep it to our residents.”
The Memorial Park at the southwest corner of Seacrest Boulevard and Woolbright Road could be replatted so some internal roads, the maintenance building and the material storage area can be converted to burial space, Public Works Director Jeff Livergood said. After the roads and other spaces are replatted, the cemetery would gain an estimated 300 plots.
After the replatted lots are sold, the city would transition to perpetual care.
“I think it is a public service that is costly, particularly if you buy land, that will take resources from other services to the community,” Livergood said. “I think the private sector offers afterlife services for people and their families. There are alternatives.”
The oldest legible headstone in the 12.3-acre memorial park is from 1903. “There likely are earlier burials there,” said Warren Adams, historic planner for Boynton Beach. “People didn’t mark graves or maybe used a wooden marker that would not have survived.”
The piece of land remained in private hands until the 1950s when the city acquired the cemetery from the developer of High Point. The cemetery first ran out of space in 2004, but it was replatted twice since then.
The City Commission also agreed to dissolve its Cemetery Board because the board has little to do, having “outlived its usefulness,” Taylor said.
Cemeteries pioneer roots
Lantana, Delray Beach and Boca Raton still have publicly owned cemeteries, but Lantana’s Evergreen Cemetery was closed to burials in 1952, according to the town clerk.
That was the year the town acquired the four-tenths-acre cemetery containing its pioneer graves. The town’s founder, M.B. Lyman, purchased the land as a final resting place for local families. Its earliest marker dates back to Jan. 22, 1886. The cemetery has 18 marked gravesites and a mass grave for victims of the 1928 hurricane.
In Delray Beach, the city cemetery is three to five years away from being sold out, according to Tim Simmons, city parks superintendent. “We do 150 interments a year on average,” he said.
Since the beginning of 2008, the city has sold 143 pre-need plots and 941 plots for burials, said Kim Wynn, assistant city clerk.
The Delray Beach cemetery was begun in 1903 by the Ladies Improvement Association, according to the Delray Beach Historical Society. The land where family lots sold for $5 was called the Pine Ridge Cemetery.
In 1927 when Delray Beach was incorporated, the 5-acre burial grounds became the Delray Beach Cemetery.
Years later, when the cemetery was expanded to 38.7 acres and a mausoleum, its name became the Delray Beach Memorial Gardens. The cemetery sits at the northwest corner of Southwest Eighth Avenue and Southwest 10th Street. Catherine Strong, the city’s first female mayor, is buried there.
In Boca Raton, the city cemetery occupies 25 acres on Southwest Fourth Avenue, just north of West Camino Real. The cemetery is about 75 percent developed, with 8,400 plots defined and about 8,300 plots sold, according to Mike Woika, assistant city manager. The cemetery still has an additional 5 acres that can be developed.
On the mausoleum side, 10,500 spaces were created and 9,900 have been sold, he said.
The cemetery dates back to 1916 when landowner Frank Cheseboro allowed an infant to be buried on his property near Camino Real and the Intracoastal Waterway, in today’s Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club, according to curator Sue Gillis of the Boca Raton Historical Society & Museum.
Cheseboro became president of the cemetery association that charged $5 per interment. Through 1928, 25 people were buried.
In 1928, the cemetery moved to Glades Road and Northwest Second Avenue on land given by Clarence Geist, Gillis said. Forty-one people were buried.
During World War II, the U.S. Army commandeered that land for a base and the cemetery moved to its present location, on a site called “Sunset Hill” by the pioneers, Gillis said.
In 1948, the city took over the cemetery. In the 1970s, additional land was acquired and mausoleums were added.
“That means some people’s graves were moved twice,” said Woika of Boca Raton.
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