Chances are that if you’ve lived in Stanislaus County for a fair amount of time, you know someone buried at Lakewood Memorial Park.

That goes for famous folks from Stanislaus County, including film maker George Lucas and actor Jeremy Renner who have relatives at rest at the sprawling cemetery northwest of Hughson. I have some of my own family there, including my late wife’s parents as well as my great aunt Dorothy Holland who lived in Ceres, and her son Garry who died tragically in a 1971 car crash at age 16.

With the summer lull, last week I visited the park with eyes uniquely equipped to fully appreciate the history represented in the park. Having been a local historian and a newspaper man for a collective 42 years, I’ve met a lot of folks along the way, many forgotten but whose faces and voices immediately reappeared when I spotted their grave markers of bronze or stone. Some folks I hadn’t thought about in years. Folks I went to church with or people I interviewed.

Lakewood is mostly populated with departed folks from Ceres, Hughson, Modesto, Turlock, Waterford, Hickman, Denair and other neighboring communities.

There are names that trigger recognition of local businesses. People like KTRB radio station owner Pete Pappas (1937-1986) whose picture adorns a large mausoleum. He died of a heart attack while visiting Price, Utah. Not far away is Walter W. Storer (1896-1968) who founded Storer Transportation with wife Gladys. His company’s busses are commonly seen going up and down Highway 99. Joseph Gallo (1919-2007), the brother of wine legends Ernest and Julio Gallo who started his own cheese brand and was sued by his brothers over an alleged copyright infringement, is buried at Lakewood.

One of the bigger businessmen here is Max Foster (1906-96) who founded Foster Farms. I remember driving to the Foster Farms dairy location on McHenry Avenue south of Briggsmore to try selling him an ad. It was a waste of time because, as I would learn later, Foster was extremely frugal. He also later turned me down for an interview, writing me a letter explaining that he had a “newspaperman’s aversion to publicity.” Little did I know, Foster was a Modesto Bee editor in 1939 when he and wife Verda made a down payment on a repossessed 80-acre farm using $1,000 borrowed on a life insurance policy. They began raising turkeys and expanded to chickens and dairy cattle in the 1940s. Foster Farms grew to be the largest privately owned dairy and poultry firm in California.

I spotted the locally famous folks who are the namesakes for local schools. People like Roma Teel, the namesake of Teel Middle School in Empire. Grace M. Davis (1888-1971) for which the Modesto high school is named, is inside the interior mausoleum. Educator James C. Enochs, a Ceres resident who died in 2020 for whom Modesto’s newest high school is named, is also at Lakewood.

There’s also a vast number of farmers planted here – pardon the pun – some of whom I personally knew. Hickman farmer Merle Fountain, who developed the Fountain peach variety, was a peach of a guy – apologies for the second pun – who I knew. He went into the ground in 2005.

You get no more a picture of someone’s life by reading their headstone than you would get an understanding of a book by reading its cover. One of Merle’s relatives buried close by him was Walter “Bud” Fountain,” who gained fame in California as a local crop duster turned race pilot. I remember my dad speaking of him as a legend, claiming that he could fly his plane upside down over the runway so close that his head could be bloodied – an outright exaggeration, I’d bet. But Bud lost his life on Oct. 20, 1973 when his P-51 Mustang caught fire at the Mojave Airport in Kern County and he flew away from the crowd to avoid casualties on the ground. He was just 43.

Scattered through this burial ground are local politicians elected by past generations of voters and whose names were familiar to newspaper readers of their day. They include: state Assemblyman and state Food and Drug Director Clare Berryhill (1925-1996); state Assemblyman Ernie LaCoste (1924-1993), Modesto Mayors Lee Davies (1904-1987) and Richard Lang (1937-2004); Hughson Mayor William Trieweiler (1915-1985); Stanislaus County Supervisors Rolland Starn (1917-1999) and Thomas Mayfield (1930-2008) and Stanislaus County District Attorney James Brazelton (1941-2007). Former Ceres City Councilman Guillermo Ochoa, who died suddenly in 2015, is in a mausoleum on the premises. Councilman Robert “Rob” Phipps, who died in 2007, has the River Oaks Golf Course logo on his grave marker as well as an image of him and his dog.

Unless you were acquainted with local history farther back, the grave of William Raymond Appling (1889-1963) wouldn’t ring any bells. He was at one time Waterford’s constable – a term we rarely use anymore meaning the chief police officer in a town.

My visit allowed me to learn about some folks of whom I was unaware. Lewis S. Crabtree (1944-1986) who served as the band director for Ceres High School for eight years before his untimely death to heart attack at age 44 is buried here. He died a year before I started my job at the Courier.

Lakewood has changed a lot since its inception as the five-acre Pioneer Cemetery that accepted the dead of Empire City, a community also dead and gone and forgotten. A marker placed in the oldest part of the cemetery on a hill above the Tuolumne River tells visitors of the town that sprung up and withered away on the south side of the Tuolumne River a half-mile west of the cemetery. Empire City was a bustling town of 3,000 residents by 1850 because of the gold miners who flocked to California. Barges filled with supplies would make their way up the Tuolumne River were offloaded onto Sierra bound freight wagons. For a brief time, Empire City was the second seat of Stanislaus County government but eventually died out. (The town of Empire was later established to the north).

Cemetery records are not complete as history erased some wooden markers. Historical accounts indicate that in the 1840s the area was visited by explorer John C. Fremont, who earned the name “the Pathfinder” and who later went on to run for president against Abraham Lincoln. Legend has it that there are 17-20 unmarked graves of soldiers from Fremont’s company when he explored the area.

The earliest known grave is that of Mary Hudelson, who died April 13, 1855. The Hudelsons are well represented in Lakewood as are the Tomlinsons of Hughson.

One of the first burials was that of James McClellan Hudelson whose stone marker indicates he was born Nov. 19, 1797, two years before the death of George Washington. Hudelson died in 1860, the year Lincoln was elected president.

Etched in stone are common epitaphs and prose of the day which are outdated today. The marker for Jane Turpen (1802-1863) notes that she was “leveled by the hand of death.”

The rural cemetery fell into such bad shape that an endowed care program had to be established.

Following the conclusion of World War II, burgeoning Stanislaus County required more burial space. In 1953 the cemetery became Lakewood Memorial Park as a non-profit corporation, then purchased an adjoining 70-acre peach ranch for conversion to a new burial ground.

In the 1960s a chapel was added to Lakewood, which was later expanded in 1982.

In 1981 the corporation sold the cemetery to Dan Lahey and it was incorporated with Whitehurst California. In 1988, Whitehurst-Lakewood Memorial Park was purchased by the Loewen Group. The company bankrupted in 1999 and emerged in 2001 as the Alderwoods Group. Service Corps International took over in 2007.

Cemetery records note that there are about 38,900 bodies buried at Lakewood’s 152 acres, divided up into 13 “gardens.” The vast majority of them are unfamiliar names who have slipped into the past and out of anyone's memory. Still others hold celebrity status.

By far the most famous burial is that of Hollywood actor Dean Jagger, best known for his role as General Waverly in the holiday classic, “White Christmas.”

The body of Florence Thompson, the subject of the famous photographic icon of the Migrant Mother, was brought to the cemetery after her death in 1983. Her worried and haggard countenance as a troubled migrant worker in Dorothea Lange’s famous 1936 photo, has served as an icon of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

The remains of Chandra Levy are buried in the Jewish section of Lakewood. Levy, the Modesto intern, was the central figure of the scandal which brought Congressman Gary Condit's political career to an end.

George and Dorothy Lucas, the parents of Star Wars movie director George Lucas are buried at Lakewood. George Sr. was a well-known businessman who started Lucas Business Systems in Modesto.

Actor Jack Elam buried his first wife Jean Louise Hodgert Elam (1919-1961) at Lakewood after her death from colon cancer. Jack Elam starred in a number of westerns and was perhaps best known as the wild-eyed Dr. Nikolas Van Helsing in Cannonball Run. Jack’s father, Millard Elam, died in Turlock in 1965 but his cremains are in an unknown location. Jack remarried and when he died in Oregon he was cremated.

The grandparents of Hollywood actor Jeremy Renner are at Lakewood. O.H. “Art” Renner (1906-72) and Ruth Ann Renner (1916-98) were the parents of Lee Renner, the father of Jeremy and manager of McHenry Bowl in the 1980s. Jeremy Renner graduated from Beyer High School in 1989.

Chester Smith, the country music legend and California TV station manager who died on Aug. 8, 2008, is at Lakewood. He started singing on KTRB radio station in Modesto and in 1953 signed a recording contract with Capitol Records. Smith became famous with his hit, "Wait a Little Longer Please Jesus.” He left KTRB in 1963 when he received a license to build KLOC radio licensed in Ceres. KLOC went on the air October 17, 1963 and it was the beginning of the change from entertainer to businessman.

The cemetery also bears the body of Michael Prokes, whose death came in the aftermath of the 1978 Jonestown tragedy in Guyana. Modesto raised Prokes became a KXTV reporter in Sacramento who abandoned his job after interviewing cult leader Jim Jones and following the People's Temple moved to Guyana. News leaked out that Jones was holding people against their will, prompting a fact finding mission by Bay area Congressman Leo Ryan on Nov. 16, 1978. The California Democrat was planning to leave with 14 defectors when the group was ambushed at the airstrip by nine gunmen. Jones then led over 900 followers to commit suicide by drinking poison laced Kool-Aid.

Prokes avoided the mass suicide when Jones ordered him and two other temple members to flee the settlement and deliver a suitcase of money to the Soviet embassy; however they were arrested by the Guyanese police before they could complete the task. After Prokes was released, he returned to Modesto where he continued to defend Jones reputation and mission of the People’s Temple. On March 13, 1979 he held a press conference in a Kansas Avenue motel room to maintain his devotion to Jones, before excusing himself to the restroom where he shot himself.

Ceres is well represented in the section where law enforcement officers are buried, including Sheriff’s deputy Billy Joe Dickens, who was fatally gunned down in a 1970 Hughson bank robbery; and Ceres Police Sgt. Howard Stevenson, killed in a January 9, 2005 shoot-out in front of Dennis Liquors. Ceres patrol officer Ken Madewell, who died of cancer in 1999, is also buried on the site.

The body of Juanna Navarro, the Ceres Marine killed in Iraq, is resting at the Honor Guard, a section for veterans.