Oak Hill Cemetery shift leader Alicia Collins, left, inspects the grounds of the 80-acre site with Lazarus Salazar, center, and Travis Rude, who have helped maintain the cemetery during the summer as part of a Texas Workforce Commission program. Caretaker Duane Griffith handled the dozer. PHOTO BY LISA CARNLEY Parts of Oak Hill Cemetery are getting a facelift, and that pleases shift leader Alicia Collins, who has been taking care of the historic Lampasas burial grounds for 13 years.

She is assisted by Duane Griffith. And the pair are responsible for all the upkeep at the over 80-acre cemetery.

In addition, a Texas Workforce Commission program has provided two part-time workers who put in several hours each week at Oak Hill for the summer. The pair -- Lazarus Salazar, 18, and Travis Rude, 16 -- cut weeds and clear trees and stumps, and Ms. Collins is grateful for their assistance.

“This is a good program that teaches kids how to work, and it’s important to give them a good foundation to start with,” she said.

Each year, Ms. Collins picks projects that benefit the cemetery and begins to form plans on how to accomplish them.

In the works is removal of a fence around the 1800s-era Huling Anderson Cemetery, which was deeded to the city of Lampasas in the 1960s. Boulders will be put in place of the fence to keep vehicles from driving too close to the grounds. That should be completed in a few months, Ms. Collins said.

The Huling Anderson Cemetery contains some of Oak Hill’s earliest burial plots, some dating to 1859.

Discussion is under way for an area recently cleared to hold a cremation garden -- where ashes can be scattered in an area with foliage and flowers -- and a columbarium, a vault for urns with cremains.

Ms. Collins said cremation is becoming an option that more families are selecting than they have in the past.

To make the area a reality, an architect would have to be hired, and funds would have to be set aside by the city.

In addition, Ms. Collins is working on a software program that lists all those known to be buried in the cemetery. That will assist families seeking ancestry information. “It is an in-depth record of those buried at Oak Hill,” said the cemetery caretaker. “It provides a lot more information than just the basic name.”

The cemetery is landlocked, she said, which means that although it has spaces for burial, there is nowhere to expand the cemetery’s boundaries.

Upkeep is quite a task for the two cemetery workers, who mow grass about once a week and keep up the perpetual-care gravesites as well as the open areas.

“A fund is set up to pay for upkeep of perpetual-care sites, and no matter what, those areas will always be taken care of. It is watered and maintained on a regular basis,” said Ms. Collins.

Though the non-perpetual care sites are the responsibility of family members, Ms. Collins said as time goes on and family members move away or die, those obligations can fall back on Oak Hill’s workers.

Some assistance comes twice each year -- on Memorial Day and Veterans Day -- from inmates of the Texas prison system. But it takes them more than 120 man-hours just to weed-eat the entire cemetery.

And it takes the two-man crew three weeks with two mowers to mow the entire cemetery.

Though the task of keeping up such a large area with just two people may seem daunting to some, Ms. Collins and Griffith understand the importance of what they do. “We help families, we take care of where their family members rest, and it is very meaningful for our community.”