Work on new memorial starts at Tekoa’s cemetery

More than 100 years of Tekoa area soldiers are buried in the town’s Goldenrod Cemetery.

Today, three Tekoa women are months away from the completion of a veteran’s memorial at the 10-acre city cemetery. Constructed of marble and concrete by an architect from Post Falls, the memorial may be open to the public as soon as Memorial Day.

“There are people in town that remember very well a loved one from WWII or Vietnam. I think there are six or seven young men killed in action in Vietnam ,” said Teresa Hoke-House, part-time groundskeeper for the cemetery and volunteer member of the Tekoa Cemetery Committee.

An estimated 350 veterans are buried in the Goldenrod Cemetery. Some of them were killed in action.

The oldest graves in the cemetery date back to the late 1800s. They include the graves of Civil War veterans who came west.

The nearby Lone Pine Cemetery, abandoned since 1952, holds graves that date back to the mid-1800s.

“It’s pretty much the history of our country and the different conflicts our country went through that shaped political policy and shaped our culture,” Hoke-House said. “On a personal level, these people aren’t just headstones. These are people’s loved ones. They were men and women that served their country and many times paid their lives for it.”

For the past three years, Hoke-House and committee members Carol Sturman and Linda Zehm have worked on the memorial project.

Funds came from donations made to the cemetery. Goldenrod is a city cemetery and tax revenue funds have not gone into the project.

Hoke-House said they are following up on the project which was started about 10 years ago by the late Don Beach, former long-time Tekoa School superintendent and principal. He put many hours into the project proposal when he was on the city council and served on its cemetery committee.

The former veteran’s memorial in the cemetery has been taken out. Two plaques from the former memorial will be mounted on the new memorial.

“It’s going to incorporate older plaques from two older memorials,” Hoke-House said. Concrete Architectural Technology of Post Falls is building the structure. Hoke-House said visitors to the cemetery will be able to walk into the new structure.