Tekoa projects: Vets’ memorial, garden near finish at Goldenrod

Roger Oestmann’s eyes get moist as he speaks about the veteran’s memorial he is building on the windy slopes of the Tekoa Goldenrod Cemetery.

A Vietnam veteran, Oestmann’s voice gets a little quieter when he says he wants the sacrifices made by generations past to be remembered by visitors to the cemetery.

“When they walk onto the site, I want them to feel a sense of reverence,” said the concrete artist/engineer out of Post Falls, Idaho.

The Tekoa cemetery is wrapping up installation of an elaborate black-granite monument for which the cemetery has been raising funds for the past five years.

The structure is projected to be finished by Tekoa Slippery Gulch Days in June.

The memorial features a 14-foot tall monument with a seven-and-a-half foot high bald eagle laser-etched into black granite. Two smaller concrete pedestals have markings honoring the five branches of the service.

Funding for the memorial comes from five years of donations given to the cemetery by the families of the deceased, said Tekoa cemetery grounds-keeper Teresa Hoke-House.

More than 150 years of Tekoa’s soldiers, from the Civil War through the Vietnam War, are buried in the Goldenrod Cemetery on the hill outside of Tekoa. Total number of veteran graves are estimated at 350.

The oldest graves in the cemetery, including veteran graves, date back to the late 1800s. The nearby Lone Pine Cemetery holds graves that date back to the mid-1800s.

The new memorial replaces an older veteran’s memorial.

Hoke-House is also creating a new memorial rose garden at the western edge of the cemetery.

The older rose garden was taken out last autumn. It had fallen into disrepair after years of people planting roses of any type in any location in the garden. The older garden had 26 plaques within it paid for by families and a tall, black trellis with “The Dorothy Jolin Cupp Memorial Rose Garden,” across the top.

The plaques, the trellis and some of the hedge roses will all be incorporated into the new garden, Hoke-House said. She has already set up the trellis in the bed of the new garden and will soon transfer the plaques. The older hedge roses were transplanted and lined along the western fence of the cemetery.

There are 26 new roses to match the plaques that will be planted in the new garden. With names like Carefree Beauty and Quietness, Hoke-House said many of the 12 varieties she selected are heirloom species while others are fairly new species.

“Basically, I’ve stayed with a theme of yellow and pink with a little red,” she said.