08/01/2024
THE MISSION STATEMENT OF THE LONGVIEW CEMETERY
The Longview Cemetery has been a beautiful and tranquil final resting place for families and friends for many years. The board of The Longview Cemetery ensures that the grounds are properly maintained, the finances are used properly, and that the cemetery can continue to be financially solvent for many years to come.
Many people do not know that Longview and “the old cemetery” are actually 2 separate burial locations. Longview was started in 1889, while “the old cemetery” has many graves dating much further back. The old cemetery was a Methodist graveyard that surrounded the first church built in Bethel. At some point in the 1940’s, the church was torn down and a new church was built in the center of the village of Bethel. Longview started maintaining this cemetery at some point and has continued to do so into 2024. All grounds are maintained the same as Longview. Unfortunately, there are times where different parts of each cemetery are a few days or even a week or so behind schedule in mowing. The staff of the cemetery is 1 caretaker and a part time helper for mowing and a part time person who we use when there is a funeral service.
An important task of the board is to remain financially sound. Hiring additional help costs more money and maintaining equipment is expensive. Looking ahead into the future with more cremations than burials will strap the financials even more. The income of Longview in 2023 was less than $45,000, including about $2,000 of which was generated by “the old cemetery”.
Please know that both final resting places have special people to all of us and we do our best, as a board, to keep up with maintenance and financial aspects. In 2023, over 30 grave markers were repaired with new footers and many of those were in the oldest section of the old cemetery. Pricing is different to buy a grave lot in the old cemetery versus Longview. The reason for this is that Longview has always been in the Kentucky Perpetual Care Fund. Only 2 cemeteries in Bath County have been members of this association (Longview and Owingsville) for the long term. Twenty percent of all grave sale revenue goes to our trust account maintained by Kentucky Trust Company and is done under the guidance of the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
We are sharing this information to help everyone have a better understanding of the operational duties. The Chairman of our Board has family members in both cemeteries, and he is the overseer of the cemetery. The cemetery activity can be very unpredictable and is anything but steady. The week of July 15th, there were 3 funerals and 2 lawn mowers that were out of commission due to needing replacement parts. When a section of the cemetery doesn’t quite measure up as you expect it, please accept our apologies as we are putting forth our best efforts to get it corrected.
