Richard Watts honored for preserving cemeteries
June 15, 2010
By Tara Sackman
At the age of 72, Sammamish resident Richard Watts is still willing to roll up his sleeves and clear away bush in the cemeteries. Since 2004, Watts has dedicated his time to restoring and maintaining historic cemeteries in Roslyn, a tiny town on the eastern side of the Cascade mountains. After years of work, Watts was recognized by the Humanities Washington organization.
“He’s a hard man to describe, in a wonderful way. He’s gracious and humble and willing to give credit to everyone else for work he has done,” said Julie Ziegler, executive director of Humanities Washington. “This was something he’s taken on voluntarily.”
Following the practice of his father-in-law, Albert Bendzak, Watts has been maintaining the cemeteries since 2004.
In the 1880s when coal was discovered in Roslyn, workers were brought over from Europe to work in the mines. While here, the workers formed lodges that were divided up mostly by nationality. Many people died in the mines and were buried according to the lodge they belonged to.
Bendzak’s father worked in the mines and died of black lung, a disease common to coal miners. Bendzak had worked to maintain the cemeteries until his death, and now he is buried in the Slovak lodge cemetery.
Watts, along with a group of community volunteers, has worked to weed, maintain the grounds in the cemeteries and rebuild fences around them. Many tourists that come through the cemeteries do not realize that there are specific places where they are supposed to walk. As a result, they can inadvertently cause damage to the site.
“We need to protect them from tourism,” Watts said. “We’re trying to get the place to where it has the respect it deserves.”
Recently Watts and other volunteers finished working on roads and putting up signs telling people where to walk.
“We want to make it comfortable to them,” Watts said.
Each year Humanities Washington picks one person from the state to recognize and to receive a grant. Watts was nominated in April and received the award in May.
“I had no idea I was receiving an award,” Watts said.
Ziegler called him and told him that he had won the award. With the award comes a $1,000 grant that Watts will put toward the cemetery maintenance.
Watts had approached the Humanities Washington before about receiving grants so Ziegler had already had some interaction with Watts.
Watts does his best to inspire the citizens of Roslyn to care about the cemeteries. In the future, he hopes to get opinions from a professional in cemetery maintenance to help them determine how to best use their time and energy. Maintaining the grounds, roads and signs are big steps toward his goal. If they are able, eventually they would like to use radar imaging to determine the identities of people in unmarked graves.
Watts said he will continue to take care of these historical landmarks as long as he is able.
“These are truly beautiful cemeteries,” Watts said.
Intern Tara Sackman can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 248 or samrev@isspress.com.
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