“This is a secret, I think, of Fort Dodge,” said Rick Carle, commissioner of the Friends of the Oakland Cemetery board, detailing the treasures hidden within.

The cemetery, in fact, was designed in the 1800s to be a park — a place where families could enjoy a picnic in the shade.

And no park is complete without a bench.

Friends of the Oakland Cemetery dedicated a new bench and boulder sitting atop one of Oakland Cemetery’s hills to the Rowes Wednesday, recognizing their tireless work over 35 years that preserved the history of Fort Dodge, as the city knows it, for generations to come.

-Messenger photo by Elijah Decious
Jerry and Marva Rowe, history buffs who preserved and documented over 7,000 graves in Oakland Cemetery, are buried atop a hill behind a monument to Union soldiers in the Civil War. Jerry Rowe worked tirelessly to mark Union soldiers’ graves. Here, nephew Larry Schuster and Marva’s sister, Delores Roseke, stand behind their grave.

But the Rowes weren’t the type to just sit around.

Before Jerry and Marva Rowe passed away this year — she died in January and he died in April — they documented more than 7,000 names, mapping out and registering all the people buried in the cemetery through countless hours of work.

Founders buried in the cemetery include William Williams, the man who established Fort Dodge and was the city’s first mayor.

“We all take it for granted. We go to work every day and don’t think about what these people sacrificed,” to build Fort Dodge, Carle said.

The Rowes’ work brought about the directory at the cemetery’s entrance at the bottom of the hill, gravestones to unmarked Union soldiers’ burial plots from the Civil War, and a census of Potter’s Field, an area where the poor were buried without headstones. They also managed to get the site added to the National Register of Historical Places, cementing its historical status.

-Messenger photo by Elijah Decious
Friends of the Oakland Cemetery’s board dedicated a boulder and bench to Jerry and Marva Rowe Wednesday, in honor of the decades they invested in preserving the history of Fort Dodge.

They also started the annual Cemetery Walk, which takes visitors on a tour of graves where the founders of Fort Dodge were laid to rest. The popular walk has inspired other similar cemetery tours in nearby towns over the last 10 years.

“We do it to get the public to know who our founding fathers actually were and what they did to start Fort Dodge,” Carle said, a tradition the Rowes started. “I’ve learned so much about people that I wouldn’t have without Jerry’s work.”

The board continues to try to get young people interested in the walks to propagate knowledge of Fort Dodge’s history.

“But to them, it’s just a cemetery,” said Larry Schuster, the Rowes’ nephew.

Thanks to Jerry and Marva Rowe’s work, the city of Fort Dodge’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry is also exploring the possibility of bringing in a software system to make the directory more interactive for the public.

“There’s a lot of people that do genealogy on the weekends when our office is closed,” said department Director Lori Branderhorst.

Branderhorst, who knew the Rowes for many years, said she’ll always remember their love of the cemetery and the historical significance of everything in it.

“Just their love and commitment of recreating records,” she said. “They recreated this whole park. That commitment’s a pretty neat thing to remember them by.”

For those who never met the couple, the boulder and bench, contributed by Fort Dodge Asphalt and Kallin-Johnson Monument Co., respectively, may spark an interest.

“(This dedication) means that all the work they’ve put in over many years is being recognized wonderfully,” said Marva Rowe’s sister, Delores Roseke, of Fort Dodge. “Going forward, I want (the city) to remember the benefits that they gave them.”

Always a history buff, Jerry Rowe took particular interest in the cemeteries as he studied Civil War history, even travelling to cemeteries in other states.

Friends of the Oakland Cemetery members recounted how much time he dedicated to writing to various agencies in Washington, D.C., getting the names of those buried there and the appropriate markers for their graves, paying for it all himself.

“He would never submit a bill,” Carle said.

“It was just that generous heart, that generous commitment,” Branderhorst replied.

Jerry Rowe’s passion for history was driven by the Civil War, though Roseke and the friends that knew him best never quite understood why the Civil War in particular.

“Jerry believed he was a reincarnated Civil War soldier,” Roseke told The Messenger — perhaps an underlying motivator for his dedication to Civil War soldiers’ graves.

In fact, he was buried in a Civil War uniform in April with a saber, his sister-in-law said as she giggled at the memory with Schuster.

Fittingly, their grave site sits on the hill behind an American flag pole and a tall monument dedicated to Union soldiers who died in the Civil War.

Even after their death, their work continues to bring history alive.