Tellico Plains families fighting to regain full access to historic cemetery
TELLICO PLAINS, Tenn. (WATE) — Several families in Tellico Plains have had to go to court to keep a cemetery gate from being locked. The historic cemetery borders the Cherokee National Forest in Monroe County.
There are a lot of people buried at the Holly Springs DeHart Cemetery, which is about a 20-minute drive south of Tellico Plains. Folks who have family at the cemetery are upset that they were denied access for a while. Teresa Crowder, Shirley Woods, and Brittany Brannon have been visiting the Holly Springs DeHart Cemetery for years. Each has relatives at the historic graveyard.
'I have been coming since I was a little girl. I remember staying out here for hours with my grandparents,' said Brannon.
'My parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents. Aunts, uncles, cousins, you name it, they are here,' Woods added.
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There are several hundred headstones at the cemetery, some of the oldest dating back to the Prock family, who first settled in Monroe County nearly 200 years ago.
Recently, a fence was put up by Richard Rogers at the cemetery entrance. Rogers bought property next to the graveyard and built a garage. To get to his RV, Rogers uses the cemetery entrance. But, he attached a sign to the fence restricting visiting hours to one Sunday a week for just four hours. He's also blocked the only exit to the cemetery.
'This is a historical cemetery. It should never ever be closed, never. My great-grandparents, I have one set here, another set here. My daddy is over here, he's got seven brothers and sisters buried right down there,' said Rita Burnette.
'We do spend a lot of time here. Family means everything,' said Brannon.
For a few days last week, the fence was locked and no one could enter.
'A judge signed off on where he can't close it again. But he still has the exit coming down from the cemetery blocked with logs,' said Brannon.
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The logs blocking the exit have been a big inconvenience for more than a year. On Memorial Day, dozens of families came to visit their loved ones.
'I've been here and they would be all the way up this hill, coming in from the main road all the way down through here. The cars would be lined up. We cannot go the exit out of here,' said Woods. 'We have to turn around, and it's very hard to turn around.'
'It's caused me a lot of stress. It's caused everybody stress. My mom is 81 years old, I'm not going to have her walk from the road,' said Teresa Crowder.
Marine veteran Richard Rogers greeted us warmly as we asked him about the gate he put up and the logs that block the cemetery exit.
'Well, I've been getting shot at by a couple of neighbors and harassed. But that's all I'm going to say because right now it is litigation,' Rogers.
He claimed that he was being harassed and shot at by neighbors. He specifically said that a man named Don Lee was harassing him.
'He came up and criminally trespassed on my property again,' Rogers said. 'It's been repeated.'
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Lee refuted Rogers' claim, saying that it was not true and the claim was because he was taking Rogers to court.
'Because I'm taking him to court over this road, and he's sore about that,' said Lee.
Families want to see the gate and logs removed permanently to enable them full access to the cemetery every day of the week.
Families who filed the lawsuit against Rogers told us they'll be back in court in two months, fighting to have the gate and logs removed. Gates around cemeteries serve several purposes, including defining boundaries, deterring trespassing and vandalism, and maintaining the sanctity of the grounds. But for years, there had never been a gate at the Holly Springs DeHart Cemetery, and families say they don't see a purpose for one.
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