On a recent visit to his hometown of Douglas, AZ, Abe Villarreal went to the border town’s cemetery to pay respects to family members. While there, he remembered stories he’d heard about an abandoned Jewish cemetery, so he went on a quest down winding dirt roads in search of it. When he found the cemetery in utter disrepair, he was inspired to launch a restoration project that is beginning to take on a life of its own.
As he wrote in an article on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/pulse/forgotten-jews-mexican-border-abe-villarreal), “The small Jewish community of the early Douglas days deserves better than an abandoned cemetery lost to history. The burial area was established in 1904 and Douglas was incorporated in 1905. The Jews were there to help form the beginning of a new American community.”
Abe, who is not Jewish, says that he is motivated both by his Christian upbringing and historical interest to preserve this slice of the community’s past. He envisions the restoration project in three phases. The first phase involves improving the security of the site to deter vandals and researching the stories of those buried there. He’s already put substantial work into the research phase, collecting death certificates, digging up stories from local archives and investigating connections through genealogy websites, like ancestry.com. Phase two includes landscaping, fixing broken tombstones and the like. And the third phase involves creating a memorial with historical information about the pioneering Jewish families of the Arizona-Mexico border.
This is by no means the first effort to restore the burial grounds, but Abe hopes that this project will create an enduring legacy. “What we’re doing is a long-term effort to preserve this place of historic and educational importance. We are securing the future of the site so people can go and appreciate it,” says Abe, who now lives in Silver City, NM, where he works as director of communications at Western New Mexico University.
To get things off the ground, Abe invites interested volunteers to meet on Sunday, June 12, for an informational gathering. Because the cemetery is remote and difficult to find, the group will meet at the Gadsden Hotel, 1046 G Ave, Douglas at 2 pm and go from there.
For information about volunteering, contact Abe at arizonanewmex@gmail.com or 575-590-2335 or visit the Bisbee-Douglas Jewish Cemetery Facebook page. To support the restoration efforts, visit gofundme.com/Jewish-Cemetery.
