Overseeing an in-town park of 65 acres that has 20,000-25,000 "residents," Brandon Morgan enjoys his job — most days.
Sexton of the Oakwood Cemetery for the past nine years, the ebullient Morgan sees daily that death is inevitable. While he strives to help grieving families as much as possible, some funerals make it tough to keep that professional perspective.
"There are ones that are hard," he said of a family burying a child. "I've got kids of my own, I can't really imagine."'
Morgan first began working at the cemetery on a seasonal basis when he was 15. Too young to operate power equipment, he learned how to dig a grave by hand. He also used hand shears to trim greenery throughout the acreage, jobs now done by contractors who, using power mowers and equipment, complete the task in a day.
"Rick Diehl was the guy I started working with, he dug here in the late 70s, early 80s," said Morgan, a 1983 graduate of Traverse City Senior High. "He could dig like no other, he was as fast as the machine."
Founded in 1861, the Oakwood Cemetery is a city-owned facility that has graves of Civil War veterans, Spanish American War veterans as well as that of founder Perry Hannah's family. Hannah donated the land, then clear cut of trees and considered out of town, for the cemetery. The first burial took place that year, when a John Hopper, according to his headstone "Aged 21 years, eight months and 19 days," died in a duck hunting accident at Mud Lake.
The facility is a treasure trove of information for researchers. Volunteers from the Grand Traverse Pioneer and Historical Society have recorded each headstone, information Morgan said he uses daily as he fields inquiries or requests for help locating a grave.
"Mike Quinn was here when I started and he taught me a lot, including how to find people," he noted. "It's like a game of Clue, to find people sometimes."
While much of the facility is well-documented, a western section of the cemetery contains remains of people who had been buried in a Sixth Street cemetery. They were disinterred and moved to Oakwood to make room for the Carnegie Library built at the turn of the century, now home of the Grand Traverse Heritage Center.
The cemetery has a 15-acre Catholic section, administered by the Diocese of Gaylord, and a Jewish section, whose records are handled by Morgan. There is also a Traverse City State Hospital section, where patients at the asylum were buried in the early part of the 20th century.
"A lot of Traverse City history is here," Morgan said, adding that his office is updating a self-guided history tour pamphlet. "I was never interested in history until I started working here. It sparked me to look for my Grandpa here."
The cemetery is part of the city's bureaucracy and Morgan's staff includes a clerical person, a city worker in the summer and a seasonal temp. In addition to a contractor performing lawn maintenance and cleaning of the mausoleum, he also taps the city for grading of roads and snow plowing in the winter. Because of the power equipment and plowing, funerals can be held year round.
In addition to interfacing with various city departments, Morgan also works closely with the funeral directors in the region as well as the family-owned Memorial Gardens on Veterans Drive, which owns the vault company and the crematorium.
"We all work real tight together, I've learned a lot from them," said Morgan. "It takes all of us to keep it going."
As for the scary factor of working in a cemetery, it just does not exist. In fact, Morgan finds the cemetery a very peaceful place to be, noting that people visit regularly, take walks on the grounds or park and eat lunch in their car.
"I don't get creepy, we're used to it," he said. "My kids don't either, we come here at night."