Category: Remembrance

This is my first blog post for Greenleaf Cemetery, so I want to introduce myself. My name is Freda Day, and I’m the new Office Manager. In my childhood, I was an Air Force brat, so we moved often. The Brownwood/Bangs area was home for my family, and we moved back here when I was a young teenager.

I’m pushing sixty now, and so, needless to say, most of the members of the generations of my family that came before me have passed. My dad is buried two hundred feet from my office. His parents are with him in the family plot that his father purchased in the 1920s. I have an aunt and two uncles, three great aunts and five great uncles, a great-grandfather and great-grandmother here at Greenleaf also. Everyday is like a family reunion coming to work.

I’ve been told since I took this job a couple of months ago that “family reunion” is kind of a weird way to look at working at Greenleaf Cemetery, but I disagree. When I see the memorial stones of these family members, it isn’t grief I feel, it’s the love that I felt for a lifetime.

I remember my Uncle James taking my siblings and cousins to the trash dump in Bangs. We would haul out the most amazing things (or appalling, if you listen to my mother). I remember being a small child seeing the sights in Europe, and being terrified of heights. My memories of the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa involve being carried up the steps and looking over the edge from high up, but feeling safe because I was in the arms of my dad.

I don’t see our cemetery only as a place of grief, but also as a place of love and remembrance. I am honored to be working at this beautiful and historic cemetery.