Laurel Hill Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, this comes straight from the official marker for Laurel Hill Cemetery in Hidalgo County. Now, every town has a place where the stories finally come to rest. For the Mission community down in the Rio Grande Valley, that place is Laurel Hill Cemetery, and it has been since 1913.

That's when graves were moved here from the first city cemetery, because the land there had turned out to be unsuitable. So Laurel Hill didn't start from nothing. It started with a relocation, a fresh commitment to the people already gone.

And the people who ended up here, well, they tell you something about what Mission was made of. There's John J. Conway, who died in 1931.

The marker calls him the founder of the city of Mission itself. The man who put this place on the map is now part of the ground beneath it. There's Dr.

Cleo Dawson, who died in 1991, remembered as an author and a television personality. A storyteller, in her own right, resting in a place full of stories. And then there's Floyd H.

Rodgers, who went by the name Slats, which is the kind of nickname that tells you a man was not built for sitting still. Slats Rodgers died in 1956, and the marker honors him as a noted aviator and stuntman. A man who spent his life defying the ground is now part of it.

That's the long arm of irony right there. But Laurel Hill holds more than the famous. Community leaders are buried here.

Area pioneers. And veterans, with service dating all the way back to the Civil War. Generations of people who built something, fought for something, or simply lived here and called this place home.

The cemetery itself is worth a slow walk. You'll find false crypts, fraternal markers, vertical stones, mausoleums, religious statuary, and curbing. It's not a plain field.

It's a landscape with personality, tended to this day by the City of Mission. Laurel Hill started because one piece of ground wasn't good enough for the people of Mission. What they built in its place has been keeping faith with them ever since.

What the marker says

This burial ground has served the Mission community since 1913, when graves were moved here from the first city cemetery because of unsuitable land conditions. Those buried here include John J. Conway (d. 1931), city of Mission founder; Dr. Cleo Dawson (d. 1991), author and television personality; and Floyd H. "Slats" Rodgers (d. 1956), noted aviator and stuntman. Also interred are community leaders, area pioneers and veterans of military conflicts dating to the Civil War. The cemetery, which is cared for by the City of Mission, features false crypts, fraternal markers, vertical stones, mausoleums, religious statuary and curbing. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2007