A nonprofit organization will host a community cleanup of the historic Mt. Carmel Cemetery located at 2093 Elvis Presley Boulevard.
The event, hosted by Mt. Carmel Ally, will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, February 21st. The cemetery is the final resting place of Tom Lee.
Samuel Oldham, a Mt. Carmel Ally board member, said they are working to bring awareness to the site so they can continue its restoration. Though they officially became a nonprofit in 2023, Oldham and others have hosted cleanups of the site as far back as 2014.
Oldham said there’s been a combination of neighborhood volunteers and contractors that have helped in the restoration process. Mt. Carmel Ally has scheduled routine maintenance such as grass-cutting and landscaping to keep the cemetery “passable” in between community cleanups.
“[The cemetery] has always been seen, and with all the attention of the past years with Tom Lee, and this [being] his resting place and you can’t even access his grave — we could no longer just go by and not do anything,” Oldham said. “It needed to be done, so we undertook this project.”
In the two years since becoming a nonprofit, Mt. Carmel Ally has procured a historical marker for the site and garnered support from local groups.
Oldham said these efforts prove that people care about the cemetery and its significance. He said it’s important that the lives of those buried are constantly remembered.
“This is a place where people are buried, who gave their lives so that we can do what we do today,” Oldham said. “They’ve been put away and forgotten, and that is not acceptable. We cannot just put our ancestors away and forget about them and then not be thankful for what they did.”