Marilyn Alaimo is chairwoman of the Lake Forest Cemetery Commission, the group that oversees the city-owned cemetery on Lake Road. The commission has been working for the last four years on a long-range plan for the 135-year-old cemetery that includes tearing down an outdated maintenance building to leave more room for gravesites and at least one 1,500-niche columbarium for ashes. Recently, the City Council appropriated more than $100,000 for designs for a new maintenance building and columbarium.
Alaimo, a 30-year Lake Forest resident, was appointed to the commission about five years ago and has served as chair for about the last three. She said she has always been interested in history and archeology and that visiting cemeteries has opened the door for new insights into ancient and not-so-ancient societies. The oldest non-royal grave markers she has seen were on a trip to Syria.
Q. Why do you like cemeteries?
A. I feel they are a wonderful educational experience. We forget how important they were in our past. We see generations buried in cemeteries. I am also interested in genealogy, and I find cemeteries give answers. You can find relations you didn’t know you had.
Q. Have you always been interested in cemeteries?
A. I became interested in them when I studied landscape design. But I remember visiting cemeteries when I was a child, when we returned to a family home and went looking for the graves of ancestors.
Q. What is so special about Lake Forest Cemetery?
A. It’s a beautiful place. It has lovely trees and a gorgeous site right on the bluffs of Lake Michigan. And with the ravines, there’s an interesting topography on the site. As you go along the winding roads, you see the graves of many famous people and those of other well-known local characters too.
Q. What trends do you see in the operation of cemeteries?
A. I’m not at all an expert, but we do see the trend that more people are becoming interested in cremation versus full burials. I would say people are interested in conservation of the soil, in general conservation issues. The idea that the body must remain in the ground is sort of declining. It is apparent to us in the direction of our sales that more people are feeling that the body does not have to stay completely intact, that the spirit is the important thing.
