A Grave Quandary For Mercer Island -- With Land At A Premium, There's No Final Resting Place

MERCER ISLAND

Mercer Island boasts of good schools, friendly neighbors and rocketing home prices - but not one dead person.

Mercer Island boasts of good schools, friendly neighbors and rocketing home prices - but not one decaying body.

That's right - there are no gravesites on the island. Not even one from prehistoric times, as far as any locals can figure.

"No one's dying to be buried on Mercer Island," said the Rev. Bill Clements of Redeemer Lutheran Church.

Lately, that's not entirely true. After decades of community indifference, the parishioners of Emanuel Episcopal Church have decided they love their church and their island too much to make their final resting place Bellevue or Seattle.

With home prices reaching into the millions of dollars and open space at a premium, a new cemetery is out of the question on the exclusive isle. But perhaps, members thought, they could construct a memorial garden with niches for urns containing ashes.

They've located a spot on the church grounds and have begun to plan. When the columbarium is completed, it will be the first formal burial site in a community where gray heads are fast outnumbering blond and brown ones.

"Like many Mercer Island congregations, we have lots of senior members," said Betsy Eason, a member of the church. "And those of us who are getting up there . . . we thought, `I'd really like to have my ashes here at my own church.' "

The city's lack of cemeteries is not rare. Where cities are small and land costs are high - for example, Yarrow Point or Medina - graveyards also are nonexistent.

But settlers arrived on Mercer Island in the late 19th century. The Duwamish Tribe frequented its shores long before that. And in all that time, nobody saw fit to carve out a piece of land for the island's deceased.

"Well, gosh, you know it's never come up," said Karen Franke, the secretary to the Rev. Jack Olive at Mercer Island United Methodist Church. "Unless people are dumping their ashes in the lake - you know how those waterfront people love their water.

"But, seriously, that's really interesting because people are very passionate about this island."

Many communities can claim Indian burial grounds but not, apparently, Mercer Island. According to legend, the Duwamish either believed that evil spirits lurked at the top of an island knoll or thought the island sank beneath Lake Washington each night and rose again in the daytime. Either way, they feared remaining on the island after sunset and did not bury their dead there, writes Judy Gellatly in "Mercer Island Heritage," the community's official history book. A historian for the tribe could not be reached for comment.

Early settlers also failed to leave their mark. One of the first pioneering families, the Olds family, buried five of its members - the last being Alla Olds Garrison Luckenbill in 1955 - on a Mercer Island hill. But even those caskets eventually were removed to a proper, off-island cemetery, according to "Mercer Island Heritage."

So when John Trumbull lost two boyhood friends in a mountain avalanche 14 years ago, he found to his surprise that the young men could not be laid to rest in the city where they were reared.

"It seemed to me to say something about where I grew up," said Trumbull, now a professor of English at a Texas university, who grew up on Mercer Island and whose parents still live there. "We don't necessarily have a strong sense of our past rooted in our local place."

Determined to memorialize his 20-year-old friends, Trumbull joined a pair of environmentalists in constructing the native-plants garden that now flourishes in the western corner of Mercerdale Park. A recent proposal to build a fire station in the park, replacing or at the very least relocating the garden, drove Trumbull to address the City Council last month about his connection to the garden.

In a later interview, he said the fire-station proposal seems emblematic of the city's lack of connection to its own history.

The only other memorial garden on the island is a flower bed at Mercer Island Covenant Church.

Years ago, the congregation set aside a small piece of land where members could spread the ashes of their loved ones.

So far, only a few families have taken advantage of the plot, but they maintain a fierce devotion, said the Rev. Eric Newberg.

"Anybody thinking of touching those azalea bushes had better watch out," he joked. "When the gardener comes to prune them, they watch him pretty carefully."

In general, though, the lack of a cemetery on the island has been the definition of No Big Deal.

"There was no real need," said Delores Erchinger, the secretary of the Mercer Island Historical Society and an island resident since 1937.

"There were always facilities in Bellevue, and prior to the floating bridge being built, we had regular ferry service.

"Nobody ever wanted to start such a business. And I would say it was as simple as that."