Recently, Friends of Midland President
Barbara Barksdale visited the Harrisburg East Rotary as the Cemetery Lady
to spread the word about all of the history being uncovered and preserved
here. The Harrisburg East Rotary has agreed to provide a permanent
flagpole, to be located near the memorial, to honor those interred in the
cemetery and to commemorate the centennial of Rotary International's goals
of promoting goodwill and human understanding. Harrisburg East
Rotary President Linda Spotts sent the following thank you letter to
Barbara for the presentation, along with the local club's newsletter
featuring her appearance:
Barbara,
On behalf of our Rotary Club members, thank you very much for your presentation. We thoroughly enjoyed it. We look forward to working with you and the Borough of Steelton on the flagpole project.
Linda
Linda R. Spotts
President
The newsletter article is reproduced below:
Harrisburg East
Rotary News
Harrisburg East Rotary Meeting Each Tuesday at Noon
At Harrisburg Holiday Inn Lindle Road Harrisburg PA
NEWSLETTER DATE JULY 21, 2004 VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3
The “Cemetery Lady” brings story to Rotary
Harrisburg East Centennial President Linda Spotts welcomes Barbara Barksdale to our meeting.
Barbara Barksdale who her children call the “Cemetery Lady” shared her story and the story of a historical and cultural gem in our own backyard, “The Midland Cemetery. Barbara Barksdale first became involved with Midland Cemetery when she went to clean-up the graves of her grandparents. She has since taken on the task of maintaining and interpreting the cemetery and those interred in it to audiences both locally and nationally.
Our club is particularly interested in this gem in our backyard, since we have chosen to provide a flagpole for the cemetery to serve as a focus point . This will be our way of commemorating the 100 years of Rotary International and its work for better human
goodwill and understanding.
Buffalo Soldiers, Slaves, Newspaper Editors, Veterans of the Civil War, World War I and World War II and more are all a buried at Midland Cemetery. Barbara has chosen to remember these persons who are long gone, but should never be forgotten.
Ernie Nicotera has begun to work on the flagpole project. An application is being prepared to be submitted to District 7390 for a grant to share the cost of the project. The Borough of Steelton and Mayor Tom Acri are to be thanked for helping us find this significant project for this the Centennial Year of Rotary International. We were pleased to have Mayor Acri as
our guest to hear Barbara's presentation.
Celebrate Rotary!
- Centennial Theme 2004-2005
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