Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

INSIDE IOWA STATE
May 24, 2002

Cemetery entrance dedicated during Memorial Day gathering

by Linda Charles
A renovated entrance at the University Cemetery will be dedicated following this year's Memorial Day ceremony.

Faculty and staff who have died during the past year will be remembered during the ceremony, which will begin at 9 a.m. Monday, May 27, in the Molecular Biology auditorium. George Christensen, who served as vice president for academic affairs from 1965 to 1987 and retired from Iowa State in 1989, will speak. Survivors also will be invited to make brief remarks.

Following the ceremony, flowers will be placed on the graves of faculty and staff buried in the University Cemetery, and the new entrance will be dedicated.

The ISU Retirees Committee raised $10,000 and donated labor during the past year to replace the brick pillars and add gates and plaques to the entrance of the cemetery.

The University Cemetery was established in 1875. The original pillars were added in 1919 with funds provided by the Priscilla Club (now the ISU Women's Club). The new pillars have been designed to replicate the original pillars as much as possible.

In addition, a vehicle and a pedestrian gate (matching the fence) have replaced the chain across the entrance to the cemetery, and plaques noting the name of the cemetery and the donations by the Priscilla Club and ISU Retirees Committee were installed on the pillars.

Interim vice president for external affairs Ben Allen (who will become provost June 1) will accept the donation on behalf of the university. Other speakers include ISU Retirees Committee president Paul Brackelsburg, and Dianne Borgen, special projects committee chair.

For more information on the ceremony or dedication, contact Betty Licht, 4-3830.