Springfield
Mayor Jim Langfelder has tapped Lashonda Fitch to become the new executive
director of Oak Ridge Cemetery after current executive director Michael Lelys
retires in October.
Fitch,
a real estate agent who also is employed as a small business counselor by
Justine Petersen, a St. Louis-based entity that helps set up loans to help
small businesses, previously was employed for 11 months at Illinois Times, where she worked as a small business consultant.
“Can you believe it?” Fitch said. “I’m still in shock.”
In
addition to working for Illinois Times and Justine Petersen, Fitch also has worked for banks, including Illini Bank,
Harris Bank and United Community Bank, where she was a vice president and
branch manager until 2017. She has no experience in the funeral industry or
running a cemetery or overseeing historic sites, but, then again, neither did
Lelys, who was an educator and Springfield Housing Authority executive before
he became cemetery director in 2011.
Langfelder
said that Fitch will start work at the cemetery after Labor Day, then become director
in the first week of October, when Lelys plans to retire. Langfelder said that
marketing the cemetery is a priority, and Fitch’s experience in banking will
serve her well. Fitch will report directly to Langfelder, with her appointment
subject to city council approval.
Langfelder
said he’d like to see Oak Ridge go high tech, and Fitch agrees. “My goal,
really, is to embrace technology,” Fitch said. She points out that Arlington
National Cemetery has a Facebook page with 600,000 followers that is regularly
updated. By contrast, Oak Ridge’s Facebook page has fewer than 100 followers
and was last updated in 2016.
The
mayor said he’d wants to see technology employed so that the curious can easily
look up gravesites online instead of relying on paper records to figure out who
is buried where. Fitch also says she’d like to explore the possibility of
looking beneath the surface with gadgets that have enabled cemetery keepers
elsewhere to discover unmarked graves via ground penetrating radar. Perhaps,
she suggested, technology can provide a look at what lies beneath without
disturbing loved ones.
Fitch
says her degree in business management will serve her well in running the
cemetery’s finances. “I look at this as another business to manage,” she said.
“It’s not a cemetery, it’s a business.”
Contact Bruce
Rushton at brushton@illinostimes.com
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 4, 2019.
