Editor’s Note: Campus Findings is a weekly column about things on campus that trigger the curiosity of the Iowa State community. Carrie Sutton, junior in journalism and mass communication, will investigate the inquires each week and post her findings. Submit inquires to [email protected].

Past the brick pillars and over the chain-linked fence lies the one thing Iowa State has that no other college has.

The Iowa State University Cemetery, the only one of its kind in the United States, holds deceased professors, administrators, students and other university-affiliated people in its 547 lots.

In its meeting on Aug. 16-19, 1876, the Board of Trustees ordered that five acres of land be set aside for the purpose of a college cemetery.

The cemetery, now located on Pammel Drive on the northwest side of campus, was laid around Tom Lee Thompson’s grave on the south edge of the north woods. ISU President Adonijah S. Welch gave the order to start the cemetery because Thompson was Welch’s prot‚g‚, according to past issues of the Iowa State Daily.

Thompson was a member of ISU’s first graduating class in 1872 and worked as caretaker of Old Main. Thompson contracted pneumonia and died in the spring of 1875.

In 1878, a janitor’s child, Bertie Wood, was buried in ISU’s cemetery because the child died in the spring. The child’s body was buried in ISU’s cemetery because the roads from the college to Ames were impassable at the time, according to past issues of the Daily.

Three students are buried in the cemetery. According to past articles of the Daily, Kung Fan Chi, a 29-year-old Chinese horticulture student, died in a car accident in 1929. Chi was the 70th direct lineal descendent of Confucius.

A 23-year-old Korean electrical engineering student, Park Young Kyn, died of tuberculosis and was buried in ISU’s cemetery because his parents could not afford to send his body home.

Knute Hegland, a night watchman for 28 years and a well-known face on ISU’s campus, was buried next to his black dog, according to past issues of the Daily.

Since these people were placed in ISU’s cemetery, the guidelines regarding candidates for burial in the cemetery have changed.

Cathy Brown, campus planner for ISU, said the present regulations are “very clear.”

According to the ISU Cemetery regulations, “those persons who have served the university continuously for a period of at least 20 years and who have attained the rank of tenured assistant professor or higher are eligible for burial in the cemetery, along with their spouse and any unmarried children who have not established a home of their own.”

The regulations also stipulate that termination of employment with the university must have been through retirement or death. Some people who have served the university in other ways may request permission for the requirements to be waived by the University Cemetery Committee.

Brown said there are approximately 185 lots still open for eligible professors and administrators.

Brown said lots are assigned “on the occasion of death” through family contacts.

“They make arrangements at that point in time,” she said.

Brown said additional interment charges are applied to the $96 for single lots, $192 for double lots and $64 for cremation lots. The cemetery provides mowing, filling and general maintenance with no additional charges, according to the ISU Cemetery regulations.

“We fertilize and weed control, remove trees and weeds — routine maintenance on campus,” Brown said.

With the exception of the Memorial Reservation section of the cemetery, which is reserved for deceased presidents and their families, grave markers must have low profiles and not protrude above the ground level of the grave, according to the ISU Cemetery regulations.

Families may decorate graves with flowers and potted plants, and permanent plant holders may be used, but they may be removed to maintain “a sightly appearance in the cemetery,” according to the ISU Cemetery regulations.

On Memorial Day, the Memorial Day Ceremony Committee, run by the ISU Retirement Information and Planning office, holds a ceremony and puts flowers provided by the horticulture greenhouse on the graves of those who died in the last year, said Betty Licht, secretary in the ISU Retirement Information and Planning office.

“The Memorial Ceremony isn’t just to memorialize those buried in the cemetery,” Licht said. “It’s to memorialize those that have died in the last year.”

Licht said the ceremony features a speaker, music, a performance of “Taps” and a “Remembering” time. The “Remembering” consists of friends and family members standing up and sharing things with the audience that they remember about their loved ones.

“Some [stories] are really humorous,” Licht said. “[It’s] a really memorable time. People come from all over the country. It’s getting bigger each year.”

Licht said the ceremony has been held almost every year since the cemetery began, but the retirees have handled it for the past four years.

The retirees are currently trying to get permission to put a flagpole in the cemetery and to fix the brick pillars at the entrance of the cemetery, which were initially donated by the women’s club in the early 1900s, Licht said.