We’ve had a few weeks to crunch the numbers and the results from the barbecue are in! We raised a whopping $5580, making this our most successful barbecue ever!

After a disappointing year last year, the barbecue committee focused our efforts on marketing prior to the event and improving the experience at the event itself and all this work paid off in spades! Starting with moving the serving time to 11:30 to ads in local papers and community calendars to adding banners and signage along the road all our planning was worth it.

Serving started at 11:30 and by noon the line stretched to the door (not an uncommon occurance for the beginning of the barbecue) but by 12:30 when my husband arrived, he couldn’t find a parking place and the line had began to wrap around the fellowship hall, a full half hour wait. At 1:00 we began to run out of food! Potato salad went first, followed by barbecue sauce and sausage. At some point we also ran out of take out containers and plastic utensils!

At 3:00, a half hour after our planned end time, we finally served our last plate and started to pack up. When it was all said and done we only had a half a brisket left over and 6 whole chickens. For three and a half hours I sat at the cashier’s table in shock as the line to the door never disappeared.

We saw a lot of familiar faces but a lot of new ones, as well. We saw people who were familiar but we hadn’t seen in a while. We saw police officers. We saw young, old and everything in between.

I had a lot emotionally invested in the barbecue this year. After much worry and disappointment last year I knew the cemetery NEEDED this to go well. By the time I got home at 7 PM and sat down to eat my own (very cold) plate of barbecue I was exhausted and nearly in tears. What a wonderfully fantastic day!

So THANK YOU to everyone who came out to eat with us! THANK YOU to the handful of volunteers that spent part (or all!) of the your Saturday helping us! THANK YOU to everyone who brought homemade sides and desserts! And an extra special THANK YOU to the people who served on the barbecue committee!

Our next event is the fall workday to be held on October 8, 2016 at 9 AM. I hope to see some of you there!

Last weekend a group of us met at the cemetery for our fall work day. It was a beautiful day for being outside and we had a great turnout!

We cleaned out some overgrown saplings just west of the Dinkins plots, trimmed a lot of undergrowth on the yaupons and crepe myrtles, picked up limbs and started cleaning the tombstones with the cleaning solution, as we discussed at the annual meeting.

A special thanks to Bruce Attaway and Bruce Attaway, Jr for taking the lead on the tombstone cleaning, to Ed Ferdon for hauling off all the debris (and for letting us use your burnpile) and Kaye Ferdon for making us brownies, to Gene Stallings and Linda Gordon for sprucing up plots, Tanya Copenhaver, Stuart Copenhaver, Micheal McCoy, Sabin Copenhaver and Logan Copenhaver for trimming and thinning out the small trees and bushes (and for being wise enough to bring a weed eater)!

Finally, thank you to everyone for digging up those saplings! That little patch of trees required  a team effort. What a great accomplishment!

I left the cemetery on Saturday feeling good about the work we did and happy to be surrounded by such a wonderful community of people. Thank you all for your continued involvement. I know time is a valuable commodity and I appreciate you giving us your Saturday. It was a great day!

In other news, I will be sending out an email at the beginning of next month about finding volunteers to serve on the barbecue committee. If you’re interested please be on the lookout for more details in the email!

Joni Buck
President
Macedonia Cemetery Association