Is the Fielding Memorial Cemetery neglected? We took a look

EastIdahoNews.com has investigated several news tips related to maintenance work at Fielding Memorial Cemetery. | Jordan Wood and Kaitlyn Hart, EastIdahoNews.com

IDAHO FALLS – A local woman is advocating for her parents’ final resting place, saying the city of Idaho Falls neglected the Fielding Memorial Cemetery for more than a decade.

However, the city says it is working to get the dead grass and rodent infestation problem under control – and explained to EastIdahoNews.com why it is happening.

Diane’s story

Diane Plastino Graves, a native of Idaho Falls, contacted us after experiencing what she describes as a cemetery scandal over the past 13 years.

In 2011, Graves’ mother, Margaret Plastino, told her daughter that she could no longer visit her late husband at Fielding Memorial Cemetery due to the poor condition of the grounds and the emotions it caused her.

OBITUARY | Margaret A. Plastino

“When I asked her why, she said the circumstances were so bad for her that she could no longer go,” Graves says. “So in 2011, 13 years ago, I started communicating with the city and the cemetery staff.”

Graves said at that point, weeds in the cemetery had grown over the headstones and the grass had not been properly watered.

“The most disturbing thing was that the headstones were never edged, like you do when you mow the lawn on the sidewalk,” Graves says. “On many of the headstones, the names were not visible because weeds and grass grew over the headstones.”

After two years of no resolution from the Parks and Recreation Department, which is responsible for maintaining the city’s cemeteries, Graves began writing to the mayor.

“I wrote my first letter to the mayor in 2013, and after that I wrote to the mayor as well – it was Mayor Fuhriman at the time. But then Mayor Casper came into office very shortly after that and I started writing her letters,” Graves says. “I never got a response from the mayor.”

Over the years, Graves continued to demand maintenance and justification for the neglected grounds of the cemetery where her father was buried, but nothing was done.

Over the next seven years, Graves devoted herself to intensive research and came across Idaho Falls City Ordinance 8-11-8, which outlines the duties of a sexton.

The ordinance requires the sexton to “fill all graves after burial, trim grass, trees and shrubs on them and keep all areas in a safe and attractive condition. The sexton shall take care of all areas and plants in the municipal cemeteries.”

In 2020, Graves said he received an email from PJ Holm, director of Parks Recreation, asking him to have a phone conversation with the local cemetery’s sexton, Scott Davis, and other cemetery staff.

“It was very contentious. They were very aggressive with me when I raised my concerns about the condition of my parents’ graves and the graves of everyone else in attendance,” Graves says. “They gave me a lot of resistance. They were not receptive to my complaints, which I had been raising for nine years at that point. It was so bad that two weeks after the meeting I received an email from one of the attendees apologizing for the unprofessional treatment.”

In 2023, two years after Graves’ mother’s death, the situation has worsened even further – the cemetery is now infested with voles or field mice.

“In May 2023, as things were getting worse, I noticed that there were rodent holes on my parents’ graves and I took pictures of them,” Graves says. “At that point, they were just starting to nest under my parents’ headstone. Honestly, I feel like this is our own Stephen King horror novel given to us by the city of Idaho Falls. I just find it so horrific and disrespectful.”

Graves continued to call and even came to the cemetery, even though she lives four hours away. She says she was dismayed to find that they had dug up the grass around her parents’ gravestones when the voles began digging around them.

“When I went, they had actually dug up the grass around my parents’ grave, and it was dirt. It was so bad, they knew how upset I would be that they had dug up the grass,” Graves says. “I said to them, ‘You know, this is terrible. What can I do to help?’ I tried to be very collegial with them.”

Graves says she has done everything she can to improve the maintenance of Fielding Memorial Cemetery and now doesn’t know what to do next.

“If it was ethical to dig up my parents and take their bodies to Boise and rebury them, I would do it,” Graves says. “I mean, the thought of them lying on a flatbed truck is horrifying, but if I could somehow magically get my parents out of that horrible place.”

The city’s statement

EastIdahoNews.com reached out to the Parks and Recreation Department to learn about the maintenance and infestation at Fielding Memorial Cemetery — and what they’re doing to fix the problem. You can watch our interview in the player above.

Tyler Smith, deputy director of the Parks and Cemetery Department, says the cemetery looks rather poor from spring through May because it is almost the last in the chain to have access to water from the irrigation district during the year.

“We get water about two to three weeks before Memorial Day. So right from the start, we’re struggling to get the grass to grow and recover,” Smith says. “Everyone in the irrigation district has to deal with that. So we’re used to it. We know we’re starting a little later in the spring than we’d like. So we usually can’t irrigate here until May 1 or late April.”

Another reason, Smith said, is a lack of staff. Many employees who maintain city property during the warmer months are teenagers who work for the Parks and Recreation Department during the summer. Their employment begins when school goes on summer break in late May or early June.

The students can only work for a few weeks before the department is again understaffed when the course begins.

“We’re significantly understaffed for our summer maintenance until the first week of June, then we’re fully staffed for about eight to 10 weeks,” Smith says. “And then it goes back downhill. But they’re a huge help and we appreciate everything they do for us.”

According to Smith, the vole infestation has damaged 30 to 40 percent of the 40-acre cemetery, including undeveloped land.

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According to the city, this is not a new problem that is widespread in open fields, as the voles eat grass and thrive in areas with low predator populations – which is exactly the case at Fielding Memorial Cemetery.

“Anywhere there’s grass, voles are very common. Last year was probably the worst year we’ve ever had,” Smith says. “And we’re still recovering from it.”

Smith showed us several areas of the cemetery where the voles had invaded near gravestones. Many of the burrows had already been filled with sand to correct the problem.

“When the grass isn’t growing, you definitely notice more vole activity,” Smith says. “Without water in the spring, the grass doesn’t grow as vigorously, and that’s one of the reasons they’re more visible in the spring.”

The city has purchased a machine to pump carbon monoxide into the cemetery’s vole burrows, which staff say will help curb the problem and protect above-ground animals such as cats and birds.

“They put it in the hole, and then when smoke comes out of the ground and different holes plug it, the carbon monoxide kills everything underground,” says PJ Holm, Parks and Recreation director. “It’s better for us because we have a lot of animals. We have a lot of things like birds, hawks and owls that feed on the stuff, and it doesn’t poison them.”

As we walked through the cemetery, we came across the headstones of Graves’ parents, Ben and Margaret Plastino, and her grandfather, Benjamin Plastino. Graves said the lawn had been dug up, but this time there was fresh, new grass where the vole bite had been.

“This whole area was inundated with a vole population, so much so that we decided to cut the grass and then re-lay the sod,” Smith said. “And that’s one of the reasons (the grass) looks so long right now – we have to let the grass grow before we can run over it with our heavy mowers.”

Sexton Scott Davis says workers are doing their best to protect the resting places of the public, including their own families and friends.

“I want people to know that we care about their loved ones, because we have loved ones out here, too. We have a stake in this, too,” Davis says. “And we’re doing everything we can to get this under control. But all of our employees, pretty much all of them, have someone here that we know. So we definitely care about this place.”

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