Student’s project helps Valley cemetery recoup after vandalism

Published 11:58 am Thursday, October 2, 2008

NORTH BEND – Most students at the age of 18 are concerned about passing those last few finals needed to graduate and looking forward to what life has in store. It’s a balancing act that takes up valuable time and often leads to self-concern.

However, these concerns were temporarily postponed recently for Ben Mills, a Mount Si High School senior, who gave the Snoqualmie Valley a unique gift to help individuals cherish and embrace the past.

For his Eagle Scout project, Mills helped Carnation Cemetery recover after a senseless act of vandalism that destroyed many historic headstones. Mills decided to clean and catalog the headstones in the cemetery.

For Mills, this interest in the project was to better serve the community and create a greater knowledge base for people who are trying to learn about their heritage.

“My family is interested in genealogy and I didn’t find it interesting until I realized its impact through this project,” Mills said.

Along with balancing school, where he also is taking Running Start classes through Bellevue Community College (BCC), Mills gave the cemetery the most attention and recognition it has received in a long time. Mills single-handedly had to go through city records and various historic information for the cemetery to complete his project.

“This was the most challenging part of the project, because it was all of my own labor and time and it made it challenging because this project had been ignored for such a long period of time,” Mills said.

In his studies, Mills discovered that about 10 to 15 graves did not have headstones. For the families of those buried without markers, Mills said he became determined to set the record straight.

“It became very important for me to identify all of the individuals who were buried in the cemetery because they all deserve that respect,” Mills said.

Mills did the preparation work by himself, and asked help from local community members such as other Mount Si students, friends and family to assist him with cleaning up the cemetery.

“This was such a rewarding experience because I was able to demonstrate my leadership skills and work on this project that was so important to me,” said Mills.

Overall the project has consumed the last six weeks of Mills’ life and is considered complete for his Eagle Scout recognition, of which he is awaiting approval from the committee. He wants to continue to work on the project because of its significance to the community. Along with the labor hours he is doing within the cemetery he is also using the technical expertise that he’s gained through classes at BCC to build a Web site for the project.

By making it easy to identify the people who are buried in the cemetery that dates back to 1800, Mills hopes the Web site that he is creating will be a source for people who are searching for loved ones who have died.

“This is fun to think you can bring such a sad concept to the new age, and present it in a unique and still respectful way,” said Mills.

The Web site will have all of the names of individuals who are buried in the cemetery, and will provide various ways to search for individuals: birthdate, deathdate, row and by hometown. Mills believes with the technology age, this will also help people studying the genealogy of their families to learn as much as possible.

Mills will continue to work on this project until he personally feels that it is complete.

“I have put so much time in, and I also want to set an example that youth do like to serve the community, which is important when thinking of the vandalism that occurred before my service.” Mills said.

He is confident that his project will be a lifelong gift to the city of Carnation and he is proud to have this as a representation of his leadership for the Snoqualmie Valley.