Dear St John Members:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Hope you and yours continue to be safe and healthy during this time.
I think you would agree with me that we are living in a changing world and uncertain times. The only thing that we are certain of is that the Lord is in control and we have to have faith in Him. It seems like we seem to be facing different challenges daily. As many of you know, St John along with Crown of Life Lutheran Church owns Elmhurst Cemetery. Originally, in 1858, Trinity Ev. Lutheran Church purchased property and started what is currently Elmhurst Cemetery. When St John was started as a daughter congregation of Trinity, they sold ½ interest in the cemetery for $1.00. That is how St. John became half owner of the cemetery. In the past 18 months there have been various changes at the cemetery both within the operation and outside of the operation. In December of 2019, Jerry Krieger who was the superintendent for the past 44 years, decided to retire. Being the superintendent of a cemetery is not an easy job nor is it is easy to find someone that can fill the position. First of all, as you may expect you have to be someone who can deal with many different emotions. Each situation is different and you have to be able to react to whatever the situation is. It is also someone who should have some knowledge of accounting because you have to prepare monthly, quarterly and annual financial reports as well as you have to prepare payrolls. We have been very very fortunate to have had Jerry for all those years. He did a great job of running the cemetery. Jerry had informed the Board about a year before his retirement that he wanted to retire in December of 2018 and he was going to start looking for a replacement. Training for this job requires an extensive training time frame before someone is up to speed. When a replacement could not be found, he asked Jay Kemp who was the lead person in the yard crew and who had worked at Elmhurst for 8 years if he would be interested in being the superintendent. When Jerry was gone or on vacation, Jay would come into the office so he was somewhat familiar with what needed to be done. Jay agreed to take the superintendent’s job and has been doing it for the past 18 months. In May he decided that it wasn’t for him and he unexpectedly resigned. Fortunately, Jerry agreed to come back and run the cemetery but he made it clear that he didn’t want it to be long term. The Board decided to have a special meeting to discuss what options we had. We basically came down to two options. We could try and find a superintendent to run the cemetery or we could pursue trying to sell it. If we decide to find a superintendent to run it, there are some major decisions that have to been addressed going forward. First of all, in the next couple of years, there are a couple of roads that will need to be replaced and that is expensive. There are also some trees that have become diseased and will need to be removed and replaced. Because of the age and size of the trees, the yard crew is not able to remove them because they don’t have the equipment required. This too is expensive to do. There is a section in the northeast part of the cemetery that can be developed for additional graves but this too will require a landscaping company to come in and develop the area.
The cemetery is financially strong but the capital improvements that are needed will require a lot of resources. One of the trends that we are seeing is that more and more people are opting for cremation instead of the traditional in-ground burial. Probably the major reason for that is cost. The cost of a niche at Elmhurst is about the same as a single grave lot for an in-ground burial but the rest of the traditional cost of a funeral has become expensive. This can have an impact on revenues for the cemetery. At the quarterly board meeting on July 19th, the Board decided to pursue the sale of the cemetery. The time seemed right to do this. With the development of the property that I had mentioned before, there would be approximately 650 graves available. This would be a positive situation for someone who was looking to purchase the cemetery. One of the major reasons that the Board decided not to pursue finding a new superintendent, was that in the next couple of years, there are 3 other superintendents of cemeteries that are going to retire and so they too are looking for replacements. Selling the cemetery will require some time because before we can even think about putting it on the market, we will need to have a commercial real estate agent appraise it to see what it is worth. I can assure you that it won’t be a fire sale or we are not going to give it away. Also, there are state statutes that governs how a cemetery is run and requires reporting to make sure they are doing things correctly. Any one who has purchases property at Elmhurst would continue to own that property just as they did when they purchased it. Nothing would change. The net proceeds from the sale would be split 50/50 between St. John and Crown of Life. I know there may be some questions that you may have about this decision and what will happen. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.
God’s Blessings
Jim Connolly
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