COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Over many years, a major part of a city's history became almost completely hidden by overgrown brush. More than ten years of work is helping to uncover the story of hundreds of people. It's all thanks to the work of a whole lot of community members.
"It has some special memories," said Evelyn Buck, looking out over a cemetery. "It's really just pleasant."
At 91 years old, Buck is still giving her effort and time to what's now called the Cookeville Buck Cemetery out on West 9th Street.
"All the Bucks became my family when I married into the family," she said. "There was a closeness."
Buck knows a history dating back more than 100 years of a place where Black families of Cookeville long laid their loved ones to rest.
"All through these years, nothing was integrated," Buck explained. "Everything was segregated. That's why there's so many people in here. The generation coming up needs to know."
It was 2010 when Putnam County archivist Glenn Jones became interested in a cemetery that had long been neglected.
"It was so grown up and green you couldn't see anything but five or six graves," said Jones. "It looked like it was the woods."
"It's sad to see cemeteries not taken care of," said Buck. "It's just a sad feeling."
Buck believed this place could be saved.
"I always had hope," she said.
"We cut the trees down," said Jones. "It took four or five years to get all the death certificates we could find. We found 250 death certificates."
Then there were the problems with the graves.
"Almost every single one of them was sunk down three feet," Jones continued.
Volunteers from Tennessee Tech and Nashville State helped place dirt into the graves. Businessman Jerry Gaw donated $3,500 for new grave markers for names uncovered by research. Buck's helping direct where the markers should be placed to the inmates at Putnam County Jail.
"These are markers that are gonna go in different places where there are no markers," she said.
"It's been a continuous thing from all kinds of different people," said Jones.
There's another reason why this place is so special to Buck. Her husband, Walter, is buried here. She met him in 1946. He died in 1979.
"He was a metro policeman," said Buck. "He was a veteran. I wanted him to be buried at the veteran's cemetery. He said, no, he wanted to be buried beside his mom and dad."
Buck is certain her husband and so many good friends from over the years would be proud to see this cemetery today.
