The life of a cemetery director is not an easy one. It’s full of stress, gravedigging and strategically placing the dead throughout the cemetery.
And there’s more to the job than meets the eye.
“This is not all we do,” said Arcell Addison, who retired Tuesday as McComb Cemetery Director after 24 years with the city. “For instance, during the Azalea Festival, we’re involved in setting up Edgewood Park and cleaning up after the festival.”
Addison, a six-year U.S. Army veteran, joined the department in 1988 after the Rev. Ralph Williams — a crew leader with the public works department’s street division at the time — advised him to apply for a job and offered his support.
“I wasn’t planning on being here this long,” Addison said with a laugh. “I got married. After five years, there was no need to up and quit a job.”
So Addison continued as a maintenance technician with the cemetery division. Over the next 24 years, he twice served as interim superintendent, retiring as permanent superintendent. He has witnessed a number of changes in the division.
Addison joined the city about 10 years after the late J.D. Anglin, then the city’s sexton — the title that preceded cemetery director — retired. His son, Thomas, who was over the cemetery association, succeeded him.
The city did away with cemetery associations in 1996 and hired Anglin as superintendent.
Addison’s days typically started with a 7 a.m. arrival and a list of tasks. He touched base with funeral homes around 9:30 a.m. to schedule graveside services and arrange the name, plot lot and time, and to determine if burials would involve mausoleum vaults or dug graves.
All that information is neatly compiled in three separate books. But many days didn’t go quite as planned.
“There are days the job can get to you,” Addison said. “Say the phone rings and you sent your guys out for a priority. You have four guys from (the Mississippi Department of Corrections) doing work, and by the time you get those guys started, a problem comes up.”
Such was the case with a last-minute request for a free burial in Potters Field from a funeral home in Brookhaven.
“We had to reorganize work crews to locate a spot out there and get it done within two hours,” Addison said. “We did it.”
And sometimes the days are jam-packed. Addison recalled a Saturday with five funerals, all back-to-back, requiring services and flower arrangements. Addison and grave digger Bobby Coon even served as pallbearers in one.
“To do the paperwork, make sure everything is together and make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be — it can get stressful,” Addison said.
Other issues can be bizarre. Addison said no human fell into a grave during his tenure, but other mammals have taken a 6-foot plunge.
A person who lives near the cemetery discovered its dangers one night when his dog ran off. Despite plywood covering a fresh grave, the dog fell into it.
A more harrowing tale involves the handful of times people were buried in the wrong locations. Addison recalled three such cases, and the headaches they involved — going through the funeral home and city attorney, obtaining a court order and written permission to go back on the plot, “disinterring” the body and reburying it.
One case involved a dispute between a grandmother and granddaughter who wanted to bury a relative in a plot the grandmother owned.
“But grandmama didn’t give her permission to put him there,” he said. “She asked us to disinter him and have him moved off her lots.
“With the way the legal system is set up, we have managed to not get sued yet. The problem was corrected. We didn’t get all the information we needed from the particular funeral home.”
On the verge of riding off into his sunset, Addison didn’t mince words about the things he will and will not like about his job.
“It was (an enjoyable job) until a lot of the stress. It’s stressful,” Addison said. “I’m not going to miss the stress. I’m going to miss the guys. I’m going to miss working with the funeral homes. They’ve got some good people. We’ve gotten along well these past years. I’m going to miss all that.”
