For nearly fifty years, members of the Spencerport community – both the living as well as those who have passed on – have had watchful care and comfort provided by Betty Spencer.
Since 1967, Betty has served as secretary/treasurer/steward of the Fairfield Cemetery located on South Union Street, Rt. 259 in the village.
Now 86 years old, Betty has decided the time is right for her to retire and is handing the duties over to Debbie Barton.
Betty stepped into the job when Lester Merz, who also ran the funeral home, sold the business. The fact her home is next to the cemetery helped in her decision to take the position.
“Everywhere I look, I see the cemetery,” she jokes. “I had no reservations about taking the job,” Betty says, “It’s been an interesting life. It was my good fortune to inherit the cemetery.”
Over the years her priority has always been to be as compassionate and helpful as possible to the family of the deceased.
“It’s a sorrowful time in everybody’s life,” she says. “It’s the most emotional experience anyone ever goes through … there is no part of life that affects people more deeply than the loss of a loved one.”
Her duties have included helping in the process of grave selection, marking the grave and contacting the grave digger.
“Death does not wait,” she observes. “When you get a call, you can’t put it off until next week. I always tried to be up there when they had the burial, to make sure the person filling and closing the grave was there,” she continues.
Betty has been responsible for the paperwork – keeping the books and deeds. “I started a card catalog for myself,” she says. She has also been answerable to the NYS Division of Cemeteries, which oversees community cemeteries, performs audits and must approve rate changes, Betty explains.
The cemetery expanded over the years of Betty’s tenure with the purchase of two more parcels of land. Other things have also changed. “We’re getting more cremations,” Betty observes. “A full burial always used to be the rule of thumb.”
Not surprisingly, Betty has many memories from her years on the job. One of her most vivid is of the burial of a member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club.
“It was one of the biggest funerals we ever had,” she remembers. “They came from all over … England … California … they are a close group.”
Betty says the Hell’s Angels were very respectful. “They wanted to fill the grave…they wanted shovels. They are faithful to those of the brotherhood.”
Then there was the time when two burials were scheduled on the same day.
“The graves were both dug,” Betty says, “the first funeral home came and placed the vault in the wrong grave.”
The vault had to be taken out in a timely fashion and put in the correct grave, Betty says.
Vandalism has not been a major issue, Betty explains, although there was one incident when youngsters damaged forty headstones. “The parents had to pay for re-erecting the stones,” Betty recalls.
It’s not completely unusual to see cars in the cemetery after dark, Betty says with a smile. “There are not many lovers’ lanes in the area … there is some traffic at night.”
Additionally, Betty has helped numerous people searching for the graves of ancestors and those doing genealogical research, even though some dropped by when it was rather inconvenient.
“Always at the time when we were pulling out of the driveway to go on vacation,” Betty’s husband Ray remembers.
When the Spencers would visit Betty’s mother in the Adirondacks, “The last call before leaving town was always to the funeral home,” Betty notes. She says she has a sister-in-law in Old Forge who has done the same job for almost as long at a cemetery there.
The Spencer children also helped out, Betty says. “The kids were called upon to do things.” David would help with mowing and her sons and other neighborhood boys would sometimes help with other chores.
Betty has been a tremendous resource for the Spencerport community. Glenn Goodridge, Chair of the Fairfield Cemetery Association, says Betty has a wealth of information regarding the cemetery in her head.
“It’s unbelievable just how much we have got to learn,” he says, and explains that whenever he’s been in the cemetery and called Betty needing help, she has always been able to tell exactly where he is and knows exactly where families are buried.
“She knows the cemetery like the back of her hand,” he notes. “She’s friendly and caring. Glenn remembers Betty standing at the door of the First Congregational Church (the Historic White Church), “ … she would say hello and goodbye to all who came in,” he says. She also was always mindful of saving spots in the cemetery so that family members could be buried near or next to each other.
Glenn recalls a time when he got himself into a bit of trouble. He needed to mark a grave and happened to see Betty at the end of her driveway taking items out to the road. He stopped to speak with her and Betty decided to head up to the cemetery to check things out personally.
“I took her up there not realizing I never gave Ray a thought. He was worried sick. Betty had walked out to the road and disappeared. I would never do that again,” Glenn says.
Town of Ogden Historian Carol Coburn calls Betty and Ray Spencer the “historical backbone of Spencerport.” She notes the cemetery, “… dates back to the 1800s when the Spencer family first settled here.”
“Betty has not only been sympathetic and helpful to those families needing her expertise, but an expert on local history,” Carol says, and echoes Glenn Goodridge’s comments that Betty knows Fairfield Cemetery like the back of her hand.
“She not only knows the location of any person buried at Fairfield, but can very often tell you stories about that person or their involvement in the community,” Carol says.
While this writer spoke with Betty, her phone rang. It was a woman at a funeral home requesting that a grave be opened.
Betty graciously passed along contact information for Debbie Barton and told the woman she had decided to retire.
“When I wake up in the middle of the night, my first thought is always about the cemetery and probably always will be,” Betty told her.
No doubt the Spencerport community will continue to associate Betty with the cemetery for years to come.
She adds it was important in her job to try and not get emotionally involved in all the burials, “But you can’t help it,” Betty notes, “when you are dealing with a friend or a friend’s parents… I always felt deeply that when someone had a loss, you had to do all you can to make things as easy as possible.”
