Legg Cemetery has been the final resting place for multiple generations of families, and its new board of directors wants the community to know they can be trusted to keep it that place for generations to come.

They just need a little time to get on their feet first.

“We had two really big hurdles to get over,” said Carl Davis, member and secretary of the Board of Directors of Legg Cemetery of Limestone County Inc.

It’s a title he’s only had officially since Sept. 1, and the lack of official secretary before him was part of one of the cemetery’s hurdles. When the cemetery was first incorporated in the early 1990s, Davis said there were five to seven people on the board, records were all but nonexistent and the bylaws said anyone on the board could appoint someone else to be on the board.

Since then, members died but were not replaced, until one living member remained, Delois Wise Mason. Mason has since resigned from the board, and Davis is one of six members who will now be overseeing the cemetery.

The board will meet in November and May, with other gatherings scheduled as needed. The other five members are Leslie Bagsby, president of the board; Philip Fleming, vice president; Sam McMeans, treasurer; Michael Weatherford; and William Spencer.

Davis said each has a deep connection to the cemetery and the Leggtown community, from in-laws that live in the area to grandparents that taught at the local school to parents that split laundry day chores and shared baked goods with their Leggtown neighbors when they were younger.

“Those are some real levelheaded, honest folks,” Davis said. “… We all live here together. We’re not going anywhere.”

Money matters

The second hurdle faced by the cemetery is financial. It was recently discovered more than $60,000 was taken from the cemetery’s bank account, a shock to many who knew the person accused of the theft.

Davis said a report that the money was found in a different account is wrong.

“It’s gone,” he said.

Luckily, board members and others in the community were able to raise enough money to keep the groundskeeper on staff. Davis confirmed it was the groundskeeper’s bounced paychecks that led the groundskeeper to contacting authorities about missing funds.

He said the new board intends to pay back every dime the groundskeeper missed on those checks and make sure he’s paid for his work from here on out, even if it comes out of their own pockets. Meanwhile, they are changing up the way financial matters are handled now and in the future.

First, a new bank account will be used for the cemetery’s finances. Second, two board members must sign every deposit slip or check. Third, detailed records will be kept.

“People have got to know where their money is going if they’re going to give money,” Davis said.

To that end, those records will include receipts for all donations and purchases, and the records will be made available to anyone who asks to see them.

“We said, if you ever want to see financial records for the cemetery, we’ll have all the checking account statements and you can look at them,” Davis said.

Mapping it out

Unfortunately, the lack of records is a running theme. Davis said reports that plots were double-sold are as true as plots never being unsold, because the reality is no one knows right now who bought what.

“We don’t have any records,” Davis said.

He said there is a piece of paper with “Row 1,” “Row 2,” etc., and some family names, but it doesn’t include how many burial plots are in those rows, how many plots are used or empty, and who, if anyone, owns which plots. Davis said he contacted the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office to see if he could access any cemetery records they had, but the request was denied because the records are now part of the theft investigation.

So the board has decided to create new records. With the help of a surveyor and an architect, a new map that includes available and unavailable plots will be made. It will take several months, but Davis said once it’s done, they will set about finding out who owns what where.

“Give us several months to get our hands around getting the cemetery mapped,” Davis said. “We’ll make ourselves available with a map of the cemetery for folks to come out and say, ‘I bought this place. This is an empty place, I bought it’ and we can say, ‘OK, we won’t sell that.'”

Legg Cemetery will not conduct any new sales until the map is made, Davis said, but they will honor any agreements that have already been made. He said the board will next meet Sunday at Leggtown Church of Christ, at which point they will discuss key policy changes, including what to do if it turns out someone really did sell the same plot to multiple people.

No coverups

Davis said he isn’t interested in hiding what happened, but he doesn’t want people to focus solely on the crime drama.

“We each have our own weaknesses, and most of us would be real embarrassed if everyone in the community knew us as well as we know ourselves,” he said.

However, he did offer additional insight into some of the events leading to Mason’s arrest. Davis said he received a call from the groundskeeper in the same week he received calls from the Limestone County District Attorney’s office and from two community members.

“It was a pretty surprising feeling,” Davis said. “… It was just odd that all four of those calls came the same week.”

He said when he heard about the bounced paychecks in July, he initially went to Mason.

“She said, ‘I’ll take care of it,’ and I said, ‘OK,'” he told The News Courier.

Less than two months later, Mason was resigning from the board of directors. Davis and McMeans took over the board and appointed Bagsby, Fleming, Weatherford and Spencer as members.

There was no money in the bank and no records to go from, but the new board is intent on making sure this doesn’t happen again. Davis said he’s even reached out to other local cemeteries to discuss how to handle the hurdles ahead.

“I don’t think (the theft) should be covered up, but what I’m interested in is people knowing their funds are going to go where they want them to (go),” Davis said.

He said if he could do something about what happened in the past, he’d “go back a thousand times and do it.” Mason turned herself in and was arrested Nov. 15 on a first-degree theft charge. She was released the next day on $5,000 bond.

While Davis can’t do anything about the theft now, he wants the community to know he can and will do something about the cemetery’s future.

“I want people in the community to know … we hope to do something for the cemetery that will change it for the next 50 or 100 years, so there won’t be any questions about who owns what, and it will be financially stable,” Davis said.

Anyone seeking more information or ways to help can reach Davis at 256-232-3982 or McMeans at 256-777-0685.