Landmarks: Hillyard area’s Evergreen Cemetery offers 14 acres of restored grounds, historic grave sites

Among the approximately 450 people buried at Evergreen Cemetery, an inordinate number of them are infants and members of the military.

The cemetery, located at 10015 N. Market St., just south of the intersection of Market and East Hawthorne Road, was long inactive and in ruins, formerly a dumping site for passersby and a haven for vandalism by those so inclined.

But then, a fortuitous thing happened. In 1989 George and Lea Kokstis discovered the veterans memorial in the cemetery, amid the litter and destruction all around, and decided to save the old cemetery. George Kokstis, a Korean War veteran and member of Hillyard Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1474, enlisted the post to begin to rake pine needles, remove trees, clean up the site and restore what they could. A Boy Scout troop also pitched in and made some improvements.

Paul Manly, also a member of the post and now a director of the Hillyard Evergreen Cemetery Association, which owns the cemetery, recalls the history of how the post reclaimed the 14-acre cemetery and restored it to the functioning state it is today.

“I never met George,” Manly said. “He died before I was involved with the post, but Lea is still alive and has told me about their work.”

The cemetery was platted in 1910 by the Hillyard Masonic Lodge, though there were perhaps five or six burials there in 1909, and it went through a few owners before essentially being abandoned. When the VFW began caring for the site and holding its annual Memorial Day ceremony there, it wasn’t long before the Hillyard Evergreen Cemetery Association was formed – with most of the initial directors coming from the post – and ownership being transferred in 2012 to the association for essentially just court costs.

Following up on the work begun by the Kokstises, Manly, who often serves as bugler at burials in the area, and a few others continued unearthing brick burial site markers that had been covered by years of dirt, Mount St. Helens ash and other debris. Some bricks simply had the word “unknown” on them, while others had names or portions of names.

One brick, still in place, has the barely-able-to-read words “Baby Stone” on it, and Manly has not yet been able to determine who that child was. Where they can find appropriate detail, they lay a replacement stone, as for the infant son of Alvira and Abraham Shuemaker, who died in 1911.

The largest project has been within the fenced section atop a hill that holds the graves of many members of the Grand Army of the Republic. This site initially for Civil War soldiers was set aside by the Hillyard Masonic Lodge, with a monument honoring their sacrifice erected in about 1914. The dedication plaque was long ago stolen, but the monument still contains the names of the 26 members of the post who were living when it was dedicated.

Manly, a retired businessman and teacher who teaches band and strings at Trinity Catholic School, has researched the VFW members named on the monument and found the final resting places for all but one. Eight are buried at Evergreen, while others are in other cemeteries in Spokane and elsewhere.

He noted that, interestingly enough, there are graves of some infants within the fenced military section. They were already in place when the land was purchased for military designation. Included there is the grave of Alice Boyd (Nov. 24, 1909-Aug. 6, 1910), deemed one of the earliest burials in the cemetery.

In his research Manly often found that wives of soldiers, especially from the Civil War, were buried next to their husbands, though frequently in unmarked graves. Where they could determine that had taken place, markers for spouses were placed – as with the spouse of Henry Raymond, whose original military marker is within the military section, and who now has a companion flat gravestone next to it with his wife’s name and birth and death dates on it.

Manly is also undertaking a project to apply for military markers for veterans, either as replacements or as original gravestones, for those who fought for this country, a project involving research, documentation and time.

It is on record that veterans buried both within and outside the fenced military section are from the Spanish-American War (at least one confirmed), Civil War, World Wars I and II, U.S.-Korean and Vietnam.

Manly, a 40-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, is now the only person from the post serving on the cemetery association’s board and pretty much single-handedly does the research – and a lot of the mowing and clean-up work, though he does have help from those in the Friendship Diversion program, doing community service work for a nonprofit as an alternative to punishment in the criminal justice system.

One of the biggest projects is righting the large gravestone of Charles Skidmore (1860-1910), which was toppled when a moose pushed it down.

“We have moose that come in to the cemetery and rub up against the stones,” Manly said, “and they can do a lot of damage.”

Burials are again taking place at Evergreen. And as was true in the early days, they are often for the very young and the very old. Twins David and Christopher Cung (David lived two days; his brother 21 days), were laid to rest in November 2013.

Joseph Kokstis, a Navy veteran, came to Spokane from Minnesota to be close to his brother George, the man who began the cleanup and restoration of the cemetery. When Joseph died in 2016, he was laid to rest just next to his brother, who died in 2006, within the fence of the military section at Evergreen Cemetery.