An old family cemetery has a new chance at life thanks to one trucking company’s good-deed

A small family cemetery in Cutler, Illinois has been revitalized after a serious storm thanks to the help of a local trucking company willing to help out a neighbor. 

The Weizel Cemetery fell into disrepair after a serious storm blew over several trees on August 10th.

June McDaniel, who cares for the cemetery, took over as caretaker of the lot after her father, Lawrence Mohr, passed. Mohr spent a good portion of his life fighting to maintain and protect the small cemetery where his grandparents and other relatives were buried, even striking up a deal with the Captain Mine mining company when they bought the land and intended to tear it up during the mining process. 

Now, after all those years and all that effort, four fallen trees were standing in between McDaniel and the upkeep of her family’s cemetery. McDaniel and her partner were too old to do the work themselves, so she started shopping around for prices and realized it was going to cost quite the pretty penny – and that’s when she decided to pay a visit to Southern Illinois Motor Xpress, who technically now owns the property the cemetery sits on. 

McDaniel went into Southern Illinois Motor Xpress and spoke to Mark Arbeiter, the owner, who told her he noticed the damage at the property bordering his parking lot and was willing to help clean it up. 

 “I thought ‘we can handle this,’” he said, so Mark and some of his employees cleared away debris from the storm and even set some of the salvageable trees back into place, with McDaniel voicing her appreciation all the while. 

“She made it a bigger deal than what it was,” Mark said to The Southern Illinoisan.

“I’m not some sort of superhero. She’s really the hero here. She’s mowing and takes care of the cemetery all the time. What we did was little. We just helped.”