A local landscaper known as “Cheetah” has spent days working for free to clean up the veterans’ section at Okmulgee’s cemetery after a TV news story highlighted overgrown grass and neglected headstones. He used his own mower, weed eater, fuel and time – and says he did it “just for the town” and for the veterans buried there.
“Here I am at the cemetery, day three, out here towards the highway. I’ve got all the stones … all the front, all these stones through here are weed-eated [and] mowed,” he said in a video recorded at the scene. “Now I’m blowing everything off. A few little sidewalks I need to finish. But other than that, all the stones in the yard [are] looking great.”
Cheetah estimates he has already cleaned around more than 200 headstones in the veterans’ area alone.
“There’s 50 graves just on the little stones, 54 just on the white ones,” he said. “And all together, over 200.”
— ‘Just Out Here Doing a Good Deed’ The work began after Fox23 aired a story showing tall grass and debris around grave markers and asking whether veterans’ graves were being properly cared for. The report ran repeatedly over a weekend during football games, according to cemetery staff.
“Ever since they been out here, since Friday, they started advertising,” one cemetery worker said. “We counted it 10 times Sunday … every commercial. Then Saturday … they were advertising on it Saturday.”
Cheetah said he couldn’t stand seeing his hometown portrayed that way or seeing the veterans’ section in that condition.
“I’m just out here doing a good deed. That’s it,” he said. “These people fought for their lives and for our country and for us. Least I can do is come out here.”
On one especially long day before Veterans Day, he worked from early afternoon until after dark.
“All right, here we are at the cemetery. I’ve been here since one o’clock. It’s now about 7:15, 7:30. I got all these stones. I’ve got over 200 stones done today in the veterans’ part. All these stones are weeded and ready to go for tomorrow’s Veterans Day,” he said. “If they come out here for Veterans Day tomorrow, it’s gonna look completely different… Thank y’all for your service. God bless.”
— One Worker, Little Equipment Beneath the TV spotlight is a longer-running problem: the cemetery has been operating with minimal staff, aging equipment and limited funding, according to those who work there.
“They said they don’t have funds or don’t have equipment, so I’m out here … working right now. I’m working for free and using my own gas,” Cheetah said of his conversation with the cemetery’s on-site Superintendent, Mark McDade. “Some of these graves just haven’t been taken care of forever. I think they only have one worker out here. Can’t afford equipment, can’t afford to pay nobody.”
The Superintendent echoed the strain.
He said the cemetery has struggled for years to keep up with mowing, weed eating and even basic maintenance like raising sunken headstones.
“Like the headstones … we don’t have the people to clean or raise them. See, all those headstones in these rows need to be raised every year. They settled down. They need to be raised,” he explained. “The ones on the ground … after about 10 you’d be tired.”
He said the previous board structure left him frustrated and often alone with the workload.
“It was just a twoman crew,” he said of the former leadership. “I’d be asking myself why I’m still going out there working every day, knowing the cemetery [is] in this condition, financially. I don’t know. You get working with stuff and you get kind of attached, caring a little bit. That’s what it is.”
— A Temporary Job That Hasn’t Started Yet
Cheetah isn’t just volunteering; he is also trying to turn the work into a temporary, paid placement through the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s employment program.
“I’m out here trying to get a job through Creek Nation temporarily for two and a half months [to] take care of the property for them,” he said. “Right now I haven’t heard anything. Right now I’m working for free, but it needs it anyway.”
He said he and Mark went through the paperwork together. “We went through Creek Nation and did all the paperwork for them to hire me out there,” he said. “I went to orientation, took my drug test, did all that. So I’m waiting for the paperwork to go through … I text them … ‘What’s going on?’ and they said, ‘Well, we lost the paperwork and we got to start over.’” While he waits, he keeps showing up with his own tools.
“I told Mark, I said, ‘I’ll work for you for free. You don’t have to pay me. I got Creek Nation – they’ll pay me. And I’ll use my own equipment, because you don’t have no equipment. All I need you to do is just help me out with some gas.’” He also told Mark he hoped his effort might relieve some of the pressure from the TV coverage.
“I’ll get the monkeys off your back, the media people. I said, I come out here and start it and make it look good for you,” he said. “I just can’t see my hometown be put down by the news media. I just did it for the town … just felt like the right thing to do.”
— Fighting Stickers, Reading Names The work has been slow and physical. The veterans’ plots were not just overgrown, many of the flat markers were buried in grass and dirt.
“Grass is pretty well grown up around all these stones,” Cheetah said in one video as he walked through the rows. “See all the grass that’s grown up around there … some of them you can’t even see.”
He said he went stone by stone, cutting, weed eating and blowing off dirt so families could read the names again.
“Now you can read the names,” he said. “I just got the weed eater and just blew what I could off, off of the graves that I could get … It was time-consuming going around all these.”
He also battled sandburs, the painful “stickers” that cling to clothes and skin.
“Look at the stickers on this thing,” he said, holding up a tool covered in burrs. “I don’t know how many I pulled out of my face.”
Despite the conditions, he said he “had fun doing it” while reading each marker.
“I went around all the graves, even read the names on them. Had fun doing it while I was doing it. Appreciate what other people do,” he said.
— Board Transition & Search for Solutions Cemetery leadership has changed in recent months. Long-time board members have stepped down and new members have joined, according to staff.
“We got a few people that’s trying,” McDade said. “I think they’re a good deal because, they already reached out … trying to find opportunities for us [to] get, more stuff [so] we can hire more people … some type of fund besides just burials and plots. They’re working on that for me. That’s what the board’s supposed to do.”
He said past efforts to seek grants stalled when funders saw little involvement from the former board.
“I went chasing grants,” he said. “[The grant officer] asked me, ‘What are your board members doing?’ … ‘Are they participating in anything besides just coming out there? Are they trying to do fundraising, anything for the cemetery?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And she said, ‘We can’t help you… If the board members [were] coming out here and they say they were doing this and that to try to help the cemetery, we probably could issue a grant.’” With the new board, he said there is hope for more fundraising, donations and possibly additional workers through programs like the Muscogee Nation’s.
He also said Mr. Mabrey has committed to help with herbicide treatments.
“We got Mr. Mabrey to come out here and … spray the whole cemetery for the cockleburrs,” he said. “He’s supposed to do that, and then he’s gonna come back again right before grass and stuff grows and spray it again. So we got some people in place that’s got the funds.”
-‘Someone in This Town Does Care’ For now, much of the visible change in the veterans’ section is the result of one man with a mower and weed eater.
“I’m just trying to get it where [I] let everybody know that someone in this town does care,” Cheetah said. “Man, these people fought for their lives and for our country and for us. Least I can do is come out here.”
He said he plans to keep working as long as he can – whether or not the temporary job comes through.
“I figure I’ll be blessed. You will see every one of these people in heaven someday,” he said quietly near the rows of white stones. “They’re looking down at me, watching me.”
