Each day, John Nickerson walks past hundreds of people he’s met over the years. He never sees their faces, and they never acknowledge him — which he’s glad for. As the grounds superintendent at Greenlawn Cemetery, he jokes that the day they do talk back will be a bad one.

“People ask me what I like about the job. I’ve got a group of people out here that I have no trouble with. When they start talking back, we’re all in trouble,” Nickerson said.
Nickerson has worked at Greenlawn for more than 50 years. Although he does everything from removing old flowers to installing headstones and nameplates and cutting grass, a big part of his job is digging graves.
Over the years his tools have evolved from a pick and shovel to include a backhoe mounted on a tractor and concrete vaults, but the process remains largely the same. Measure off the grave with laserlike precision, double-check, and then dig.
“It’s a lot different now than it used to be. I dug most of the graves, so when the next person goes in, I know where they’re at because I’m the one that put them there,” Nickerson said. “You have to know where to bury somebody next to somebody else and not go into the next grave, because you only have a foot in between. You can’t do no wild digging.”

Nickerson started working part-time at Greenlawn when he was 13 years old. He lived across the street from the cemetery and would often tag along to help a childhood friend dig graves.
He quickly became friends with the Varner family that owned the place and was hired on a full-time basis in 1964. He’s been there in some capacity ever since.
“The more I worked, the more I liked it. I’ve worked other places, but I always ended up back here,” he said.
Although he enjoys the calm of the cemetery, Nickerson said the job certainly isn’t for everyone. The thought of putting people — and occasionally loved ones — into the ground has driven more than a few new hires away in short order.
Nickerson said that’s an issue he struggles with occasionally, but learned to deal with after a few months on the job.
“Half the time you don’t even think about what you’re doing,” Nickerson said. “Somebody told me once that I had to think about something else. It used to eat me up. I used to walk around every grave. Ain’t no way you can do that in a cemetery and get anything done. I guess it took me about a year to stop thinking about it.”
Even now, at 68 years old, Nickerson is on the job. He estimates he dug almost 100 graves in 2014 and has no plans to walk away as long as he’s physically able to work.
His boss, current Greenlawn owner Harry Sharp, is in no hurry to find Nickerson’s successor, either. In the land of the dead, Nickerson is a living, breathing treasure trove of experience and information that would be impossible to replace.
“We are so thankful he wants to stay on, because he knows every inch of this place,” Sharp said. “He told me, reluctantly, that he feels like he owns this place. I told him I feel that way, too. I don’t make any long-term decisions without discussing it with him.”