PILOT CLUB of JACKSONVILLE
Contact Us at www.PilotClub.org
 




History of Port of Jacksonville Pilot Club Cemetery Tour

About fourteen or fifteen years ago, the Pilot Club was looking for a new idea for a fund raiser, one that would bring visibility to the club, bring in monies to fund our charitable endeavors, and help the community as well. We wanted something that was different and had not been tried before in our community.
We heard of a small historical cemetery walk that had been done in St. Charles, Illinois, by the local historical society. After getting more information about their tour, we felt that this was something we could do, and maybe do even better. So, one Saturday, a number of us piled into two vans and made the rounds of the cemeteries in town that we knew about. After seeing Old City Cemetery, we knew that this would be the one. It was old, it was visually very appealing, it was close to the city, and it belonged to the city and we probably would have no trouble getting permission to host a tour there.
While Old City was everything we wanted it to be, we had no real plan of just how we were going to go about preparing for a tour. We started by going to the cemetery and writing down names and dates we found on the stone markers. Fortunately, we are club of varied talents. One of our members, Leni Bessette, is a history buff and went to work doing the research. Another, Louise Warren, was excellent at putting together a script for the guides based on Leni’s research. Louise was also our first tour chairman and with the help of a committee, put together a timeline for us to follow. The tour was to be October 17 and 18, 1998. We felt the fall season was a good time to go walking in a cemetery, especially with Halloween, just around the corner
We decided to have a few dramas along the route and recruited friends and family to help as guides, dramatists and volunteers. We offered tours at a reduced rate to groups of students since we felt the history of Jacksonville would be a nice addition to their history studies. We even offered visitors the option of making rubbings of the various markers along the way. The first tour was fairly successful, we made a little over $300 profit after our expenses of printing tickets, programs and posters. Because we had so much material left from the research, the club decided to do a second tour of Old City Cemetery the following year. That year, Dick Mueller of Evergreen Cemetery asked us if we would be willing to do tours of Evergreen. Evergreen would help to sponsor us as far as expenses were concerned. The club voted to do tours of Evergreen the following year as we had pretty much exhausted the material we had researched for Old City.

Our primary fundraiser is our annual Cemetery Tour, which again this year highlights Evergreen Cemetery in North Jacksonville.

In the past we have purchased a handicapped-equipped van for Grove House and provided money for a recreational fund for their clients. 

We have presented Builder’s Care with a check for over $10,000 to help Senior Citizens who live in substandard housing.

Donated over $10,000 to ARC for their dental program, given over $12,000 to the special education programs of Gateway Girl Scout Council including Smile Camp.

 Donated over $14,500 to the Down’s Syndrome Program at Hope Haven.

 Purchased special equipment for Wolfson Children’s Hospital and donated money to the Jericho school for autistic children.



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Cemetery Tour History