Volunteers in small Oklahoma town come together to clean up cemetery

By Jason Burger

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    CADDO COUNTY, Oklahoma (KOCO) — Volunteers in a small Caddo County town came together to clean up a cemetery.

After the storm blew Sunday night, many headstones were blown over and some were even broken.

“Me and my cousin came up here on Monday after the storm, and we were just flabbergasted I guess,” said Gene Fogle, Gracemont resident.

Locals in Gracemont suspected the tornado hit their town cemetery and left dozens of tombstones damaged.

“My wife is buried up here. And I’ve got grandma and grandpa buried down there below the hill so, I’ve got several relatives that are actually buried here,” Fogle said.

Locals said it was strange because some of the flowers and smaller items didn’t even move while headstones were knocked over. In fact, KOCO 5 was told about 80 of the gravesites had to be fixed.

“Anywhere from two or three hundred pounds to one thousand pounds, just depends. Granite is heavy,” Fogle said.

Luckily, volunteers from the Lost Cowboy Church in town stepped up and fixed as many headstones as they could. The cemetery virtually looks back to normal.

“They’re younger and stronger so I really appreciate those guys because it was a mess!” Fogle said.

He said he’s glad his family’s graves were repaired and as the sun sets, it’s almost like nothing even happened.

“I really feel like it was a tornado because we’ve never had tombstones blown over like that before,” Fogle said.

The Gracemont area was under a tornado warning Sunday night and it’s possible a tornado did touch down but still no official word.

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