Volunteer Opportunities
We are always welcoming of volunteers year-round, and are grateful for those who would like to donate their time and services to our cemetery. For monetary and physical donations, please see our donations page here. Our greatest need is during the summer growing season, when we are overwhelmed with mowing and trimming. We welcome all who would like to volunteer their time to help us with mowing and trimming, so long as they are at least 18 years of age and are fit and able to operate commercial landscaping equipment. Please remember that WE DO NOT ALLOW VISITORS TO OPERATE POWER EQUIPMENT OR POWER TOOLS ON CEMETERY GROUNDS. If you would like to help us mow and trim as a volunteer member of our staff, please contact the office at 860-354-6174.
We also have a number of other daily volunteer opportunities. If you do not feel you are fit to help us with the grueling outdoor manual labor, we will be glad to find a place for your services. Again, please call the office at 860-354-6174.
We have two large hay fields in the northern-most end of our cemetery. We are always looking for a local farm to hay these fields for us, and we are still looking for the 2018 growing season. Any farmer who wishes to hay these fields may keep whatever hay they harvest in exchange for their services. Photos of the hayfields (taken March 10th, 2016) are below (click for a larger view):
Finally, there are a number of projects that we would like to take on, but may not have the resources to undertake in the very near future. Some may be ideal Eagle Scout Projects, Gold Award Projects, or Senior Project for certain schools such as Shepaug Valley High School. These include, but are not limited to the following (will be updated on a rolling basis):
1. Living Fence Installation
Along our western property line is a neighbor who, to put it delicately, keeps a lot of things in his backyard. The yard has been referred to by a number of our visitors as "an eye sore".
To quell the rising number of visitor complaints, we have begun erecting a living fence of arborvitae. Our hope is that as the arborvitae grow, they will obscure the view of our neighbor's yard. Sadly, we have neither the time nor the financial resources to finish this project in the near future. Additionally, some of the arborvitae have died and need to be replaced.
A well-completed project would require obtaining enough arborvitae to finish the project (between 10-15 more at least 6 feet tall), and properly installing and watering them within our deer-protective fencing. We hope to remove the deer-protective fencing when the arborvitae reach a height that will allow the arborvitae to survive lower-branch chewing by deer during harsh winters (they do not eat arborvitae if other food supplies are plentiful). For inquiries about our living fence project, please contact the office at 860-354-6174.
2. Signage
Visitors may have noticed something different about the Cemetery over the past few years: the addition of a great deal of signage. Although we've made great leaps from the complete lack of signage we had just a few years ago, we still have a need for improved signage. A well-completed project would require building and erecting/installing around a dozen roughly 2' x 2' signs, and obtaining the necessary materials for proper construction and installation. For inquiries about our signage project, please call the office at 860-354-6174.
3. Database Integration
As you can see on our maps page, we now have at least a minimal integration of our section mapping with Google Maps. However, this is not the full extent to which we would like to have our database software integrated with our website. A well-completed project would bring our roughly 9,000 line database to the internet integrated with our website, and would allow our much more detailed section maps to be linked to the database and Google Maps to allow visitors to our website see - at a moment's notice - where exactly each of our occupants is buried and all the information we have about them, all integrated onto Google's mapping software. Please note that this project will require professional consultation with multiple programming and web-development professionals. For inquiries about our database integration project, please contact the office at 860-354-6174.
4. Veterans' Section
This project may go beyond the scope of an Eagle Scout Project, a Gold Star Project, or a Senior Project, and that is why we have listed it last. We have a small knoll atop of which sits our flagpole. It is also the home to our veterans' memorial monuments.
The knoll is located between Section 6, Section J, and Section 1. From all outward appearances, it may well be confused as being an interable section of our cemetery, but it is not. We get a multitude of requests to purchase burial rights in this section, but we do not have this section mapped for rights sales, and, therefore, cannot inter anyone in this section.
There is a very large demand for graves in this section. In fact, the need to be near these monuments and our flagpole is the exclusive reason for all of the sales of graves in Section 6 immediately adjacent this knoll; of those interred in the row adjacent the flagpole knoll, all are veterans.
Additionally, there is a general demand for both a privately-run veterans' cemetery generally for a number of reasons, and demand for a veterans' cemetery in the Danbury area regardless of whether it is privately- or publicly-operated. As of yet, there are no state-run veterans' cemeteries in the Danbury area and there are no privately-run cemeteries in Connecticut with veterans' sections of this scale (1,000+ graves).
Initial estimates value surveying, marking and mapping the knoll into a usable veterans' section at roughly $30,000.00. This estimate includes no grading, no turf improvement, no landscaping, no hardscaping, and no road improvements. Obtaining even the basic funds of $30,000.00 has proven feasibly impossible in-house, and the massive workload of skilled labor required would necessitate contracting the entirety of the project. Additionally, a capital expenditure of this magnitude would legally require a formal bid submission through the Town of New Milford.
If this project were to be completed, we would be looking to - at a minimum - install hardscaping and landscaping, and to improve the turf to a quality acceptable to the interment of our veterans, and, as a courtesy to them, a spouse (current state- and federally-run veterans' cemeteries do not allow the interment of spouses). Finally, if the project were to receive funds in excess of the cost of installation, all proceeds would go towards establishing a fund to reduce the cost of burial to the surviving family of our veterans.
The scope of this project would include - and may exceed - the following:
- Obtaining the necessary funds through various resources, which may online video marketing, crowd-funding, grant writing, and other fundraising efforts
- Working with Cemetery officials and Town officials to formalize and submit a bit for the project
- Coordinating contracted labor
- Public and media relations throughout the project
We expect this to be a multi-year project. We do not expect this project to even break ground before a year of planning has taken place and all of the minimum necessary funding has been obtained. Additionally, we would be remiss to begin this project if we were not able to establish a "financial aid" fund sufficient to reduce burial costs to our veterans by a noticeable amount in perpetuity.
UPDATE: We have obtained a preliminary estimate totaling $314,500.00 to complete all surveying, mapping, marker installation, landscaping, hardscaping, etc. The next step would be to move forward with the "Detailed Section Planning", which would provide a formal architectural design, CAD conceptual drawings/renderings, media, and a more accurate and detailed final estimate of total project costs. The fee to complete this phase is $6,800.00. Grever & Ward have been kind enough to provide some preliminary drawings and the preliminary estimate so far pro bono; both can be downloaded in .pdf format here."
Details about what would define a "well-completed" project are available upon request. Please contact the office at 860-354-6174. NOTE: WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING MONETARY DONATIONS AT THIS TIME for this project. We will accept donations to our general endowment in advance of the start of this project, but donations specific to this project cannot be accepted in good conscience until it can be reasonably assumed obtaining the full amount of funding needed will be a possibility. If you would like to voice your approval of this project, or voice your opinion otherwise, we would greatly appreciate your opinions addressed to our PO Box or our email address, both located on our contacts page.