Last month, 91-year-old Logan Conner made a tough decision – one that he hopes won’t mean the end of regard for a haven of Pleasant Hill history. For the past 16 years, Conner has been mowing and caring for Venable Cemetery on Pea Ridge – a place that brings back a flood of memories from his childhood and has given him a sense of pride in his golden years.

“Every Decoration Day when I was about 12 to 15 years old, I walked two and a-half miles to the cemetery with my grandfather,” he said. “Back then, we cleaned it by hand with hand scythes.” Conner retired from his job as a construction worker in the mid-1970’s and moved back to Pleasant Hill. It wasn’t long before he decided to go to the cemetery he visited annually as a teenager.

“It just came back to my mind; the older times,” he said. “So we drove out there.” Conner was saddened by the condition in which he found Venable Cemetery in 1987. Brush and briars were woven among the headstones, and a large cedar tree had crushed some of the grave markers.

Even though the weeds were high, Conner vowed to clean the cemetery and preserve it to the way he remembered it as a young boy. He enlisted his brothers and sisters to help him, and after several days of intense mowing and cutting, Conner had accomplished his goal. After the initial effort, it was up to Conner to maintain the cemetery. Since 1988, he has mowed it about six times a year, but it wasn’t always a simple job.

The path to Venable Cemetery is rough, and Conner and his wife, Neta, made each mowing a joint effort. “It was really something that was hard to plan. We couldn’t go out there when it was wet, because we had to drive through someone else’s field. We had to go through two gates,” Conner said. “My wife wouldn’t let me go alone, so we went and took a sack lunch.”

“If you went out there, you’d see why I wouldn’t let him go by himself,” Neta said. With the cemetery being near a wooded area, Neta said she was afraid hunters would mistake her husband for a deer. “I guess if they shot him, they would have to shot me, too.” she said.

Groundskeeper of Venable Cemetery has never been a paid position, but Pleasant Hill Township officials agreed to pay for the Conner’s fuel expenses. “It’s just something I took on myself,” he said. “There’s no committee for it. I have gotten a few donations over the years.”

Conner used a riding lawnmower, but sometimes he had to go the extra mile when there was a problem. “One year two trees fell down. I had to get a chainsaw and cut them, then get my tractor to pull them out of the cemetery.” he said.

In 1966, Conner helped Gary and Merle Clendenny plot a map of Venable Cemetery with a detailed description of each stone. About three weeks ago, Conner mowed Venable Cemetery for the last time. He and Neta made the mutual decision to quit.

“I was thinking of my health and my wife’s health,” he said. Conner told Virginia Hart, who also has relatives buried in the cemetery that she should begin looking for someone else to maintain it. He says even though he has given up his mowing duties, he plans to go back. “I will be checking on it to see if it is being cared for,” he said. “What worries me the worst is that it will be let to grow back to timber. When you work so hard, you hate to see it grow back. I guess all things have to change as we go along.”