Looking for the lost children of the Jesse Lee Home Cemetery

SEWARD, Alaska (KTUU) - The Jesse Lee Home Cemetery is all that’s left from the school’s time in Seward. Opened in 1926 as both an orphanage and a boarding school for Alaska Native children, it was closed down after being damaged in the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, leaving the buildings abandoned until they were torn down in 2020.

At the same time the buildings were being demolished, the Qutekcak Native Tribe realized there had been a cemetery as part of the school. The Jesse Lee Home Cemetery has sat abandoned for over 60 years. Reclaimed by nature. Covered by tall trees and heavy brush.

At some point, someone had removed all of the small metal markers from the graves for safe keeping. No notes were made as to what specific makers went with which grave. And then the markers were eventually lost too.

So when volunteers started clearing the brush from the cemetery, they had no idea as to who was buried here and how many graves there were. There is a single headstone. It belongs to a nurse who worked at the Jesse Lee Home.

With the help of two other groups they have used metal detectors and LiDAR to identify about 40 grave sites. Those graves are now marked with small plastic flags. They have plans to use LiDAR on the rest of the cemetery this summer to identify the remaining graves.

They will eventually get a count of the total number of graves, but they won’t be able to put a name to each one.

Today, the cemetery is a quiet place. Shaded by the tall trees that once helped hide it. The plan is to place a totem arch at the entrance and install some paths with benches to create a space for reflection and healing.

On April 13, the Seward City Council started the process of transferring the cemetery land to the Qutekcak Native Tribe.

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