My focus is almost exclusively on Oakland Cemetery in Cranston, RI and the adjoining Roger Williams Park Mausoleum. In 1960 when I was four, my dad and I began routinely exploring on Saturdays what were then the well-maintained cemetery and mausoleum. Over the decades, the fascinating burial ground memorializing thousands of Rhode Islanders from four centuries became grossly neglected and vandalized. Oakland Cemetery is finally being cleaned-up as of 2024+, rendering it an opportune time to record images and data related to its many vulnerable graves. Unfortunately, it is too late for the crumbling mausoleum, but the 500+ people whose remains are still entombed there deserve to be remembered and documented.

Steven Lavallee