Tehachapi News

Grave markers stolen

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Kids with nothing better to do have been known to enter the fenced Old Tehachapi Cemetery and kick over headstones, but some time between July 17 and July 25, vandals raised the bar by stealing wooden grave markers.

“This time it was really a wholesale kick,” said Judith Kennedy of the Tehachapi Rose and Garden Society, which cares for the hilltop site.

The replica markers, a project of the Tehachapi Heritage League, were not original but were decades old. Granite or marble headstones 130 years old or more distinguish some of the other graves.

Kennedy said that Pat O’Donnell of the society, who attends to the graveyard several times a week, sent her an e-mail July 26 telling of the loss.

O’Donnell reported that 10 grave markers had been taken from the cemetery. He later discovered another one missing, for a total of 11.

 Nine of the markers carried the inscription “Unknown” and one was from the grave of a Scott Lycurgus Johnson.

According to the cemetery records,  died at the age of 27 in 1877.

The cemetery, once called the Shields Cemetery, was established in 1858. The last burial on the property was in 1927.

Twenty-nine persons are listed on the display case as buried in the cemetery, including an infant with the last name of Godwin (1876), a Thomas Godwin who was “killed by James Hayes” (no date), C. North who was “killed in a gun fight at Greenwich” (1877) and Bud Thomas who was “killed by a horse in Bear Valley” (1873).

Sharon del Rio, who has lived across the street from the graveyard for 25 years, said that some of the smaller children in the neighborhood -- who like to play outlaws in the enclosure -- reported seeing “bigger kids” knocking over the markers.
“They were not only knocked over but they’re gone,” del Rio said.

“People are in and out all day long,” said del Rio, who can hear people exclaiming about the inscriptions. “Some people who go in do not nice things.”
She said the marble monuments have been relatively unmolested.

According to Kennedy, members of the Daughters of the American Revolution are in the process of identifying more names of people buried at the site.
“More graves are being discovered,” she said.

Some of the graveyard improvements were done as an Eagle Scout project.
The site is adorned with roses and a meditation bench. Located at Violette Court and Lilac street in Golden Hills, it is surrounded by homes.

“It’s like a sacred place,” del Rio said. “It’s part of our history. If we lose it we can never get it back.

“Some families buried there still have family here. They want to know their loved ones are safe.”

Del Rio said her husband Curtis now locks the gate at night and opens it in the morning.

The Kern County Sheriff’s Department is looking for the vandals who took the grave markers.

Anyone with information about the missing wooden markers is urged to call the Kern County Sheriff’s Department at 861-3110.