The Victor Cemetery, filled with mature evergreens and deciduous trees and bushes, is usually alive with blooms and awash in color by Memorial Day. All that beauty comes at a cost. As is likely with many cemeteries, there are few funding sources. For Victor, those are limited to sale of plots, donations, and a few bequests/grants. Victor’s Groff family has a legacy of support for the community, and when they learned of the extensive and expensive, but necessary, arborist work being done in the cemetery this summer, they saw an opportunity to give again. Sisters Ann Groff and Kay Groff Clevidence, as well as Kay’s son and daughter, Ryan and Sarah Clevidence, are donating $30,000 toward maintenance and sustainability, which includes groundskeeping, sprinkling, road repair, and irrigation upkeep, plus the unforeseen and unexpected. Six generations of the Groff family have lived in the Victor area since 1866. They have deep personal ties to the cemetery and community and encourage others to also donate time, talent, and treasure.
Until the early 2000s, there was a tax levy which helped with cemetery costs. Then an Assistant Ravalli County Attorney decreed Victor’s cemetery to be “private,” as it was not attached to an incorporated town. While other Bitterroot Valley cemeteries in the same situation were able to gather sufficient signatures to put a levy on a ballot and garner the requisite votes to succeed, Victor was not able to even collect enough signatures to be on a ballot. The existing levy went away.
The backstory of the Victor Cemetery begins with its founding, of necessity, in the 1870s. Early settlers Stearns and Mary Lark Use Blake suffered the indescribable tragedy of losing six young children, prior to raising five to adulthood. When the first child passed away, there was an immediate need for a dedicated burial location. Fortunately, there was a suitable area a mile northwest of what would become Victor, on a gentle slope of the foothills of the Bitterroots, facing the Sapphires. From this plot of land, 19.5 acres that make up the current cemetery were acquired by the Ancient Order of the United Workmen Lodge No. 23 and the Victor Masonic Lodge No. 43, on August 4, 1893. On June 20, 1913, a cemetery association was formed for the care of the grounds. Complete responsibility for the property was passed from the Masons to the association in June of 1943. It is noted that an existing wooden marker is likely the oldest one, and the cemetery holds Civil War veterans. There are more than 4,000 sold plots, including occupied and unoccupied. There is land for further development, as demand requires.
Members of the Victor Cemetery Board and the Groff family at the Victor Cemetery. Pictured, l to r: Cara Mia Hemeon, Sara Clevidence, Joann White Hosko, Maxine Smith Krowen, Elizabeth Chaney Ingram, Ryan Clevidence and Ann Groff.
For about one hundred years, a very successful fundraiser, a Decoration Day (later Memorial Day) dinner was held each late May. In the beginning, chicken pot pie, with gravy and flaky biscuits, was the centerpiece of the meal, with sides of Jello salads and homemade pies, and cottage cheese and dill pickles. The pot pies were cooked on a wood-burning range at the Victor School gymnasium area, until the kitchen/cafeteria was completed in 1951. Eventually, the meat dish became meat loaf, and later ham was added, served along with mashed potatoes and vegetables. Jello salads and the delicious homemade pies were donated. Many volunteers aided with set-up, take-down, serving, bussing, whatever was needed. Families travelled for miles to meet up with other family and friends, to decorate graves and reconnect, like a community reunion. Not only was it a great fundraiser, but a community event in the Americana sense. In about 2014, various changes in attitudes, social structure, citizenry, and lack of volunteers brought it to a sad end.
Death doesn’t take a holiday, and survivors must get through it, if not over it. Graveyards, burial grounds, and cemeteries are an essential part of the fabric of communities and a civic duty. Like everything tangible about human life, they require financial support to survive. The Victor Cemetery Association is very grateful to the Groff family, and all who give, in any way, for the betterment of the cemetery and community in general.
The current Cemetery Board includes: President Maxine Smith Krowen; Secretary/Treasurer Joann White Hosko; Sexton Cara Mia Hemeon; Member Belle Clark.
Submitted by Victor Cemetery Board.