As causes go, a cemetery isn’t an easy sell. Jack Hilborn and Roger Van Sickle realize that.

Delaware’s Oak Grove cemetery on South Sandusky Street is a wooded sanctuary, with rolling hills, walking paths and the headstones of hundreds of people who once walked Delaware’s streets and contributed to its history: the parents of President Rutherford B. Hayes, a family who drowned in the 1913 flood, the only two-time Miss America É more than 22,500 people in all.

“Oak Grove is a community gem,” Hilborn said. “It’s a park. Peaceful, safe, quiet.”

Still, it’s a graveyard.

“It’s hard to get excited about fundraising for the cemetery,” Hilborn acknowledged.

Nevertheless, he and Van Sickle are hoping to kindle some interest in the 161-year-old burial ground, because Oak Grove is in desperate need of funds.

Oak Grove, dedicated on July 20, 1851, three days before its first occupant, Elizabeth McCracken, was interred, is a private cemetery.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize (the) cemetery is a private corporation for the benefit of our city,” Hilborn said. People assume cemeteries are publicly owned. Some are, and those often receive public dollars.

Oak Grove, however, as a private, nonprofit entity, receives no city, state or federal support. It is overseen by a 15-member governing board, eight of whose members serve as trustees. All expenses – for maintenance, equipment, salaries, emergencies and what-have-you – are funded by lot sales, interest on its perpetual care accounts and donations.

Van Sickle, who serves as board president, joined the Oak Grove board in 1987 as its treasurer. The board’s investments in bank certificates of deposit or Triple A bonds once earned as much as 12.5-percent interest.

“We’re lucky to get 2 percent now,” Van Sickle said.

The shaky economy and changes in how people honor deceased loved ones also hurt the cemetery’s bottom line. More people are choosing cremation, and many who do are opting not to inter the cremains in a cemetery but to scatter them elsewhere.

Hilborn, Van Sickle and other board members have no objection to those choices. But it’s a fact that a traditional burial, including a lot, interment and a foundation for a headstone, brings in more money than the interment of ashes.

Then the financial challenges pile on: Gas prices are high. “We mow 80 acres,” Van Sickle said. Maintenance costs for the cemetery’s mowers, backhoe and other equipment increase as the equipment gets older. The cemetery’s roads and buildings need work.

“We have a huge infrastructure to take care of down there,” Hilborn said. The board pays four full-time employees, office manager Carolyn Ringley, general manager Ray Pettit, and two full-time grounds workers, and one seasonal worker.

Also, Oak Grove isn’t the only game in town.

“There’s a competition factor,” Hilborn said. “There are many choices for families.”

Price is an object for most people, as are a cemetery’s policies regarding headstones, flowers and other decorations.

“We compare prices with other cemeteries to remain a viable place for people to consider,” Hilborn said.

Several years ago, the board sold several acres to Delaware Christian School. That paid some bills, but bills keep coming and the board has no more land to sell. The law prohibits using the house on the cemetery grounds as collateral for a bank loan.

Donation requests are sent yearly, and volunteers do as much work as possible. Board member Brent Carson organized a fence-painting project a few years ago. Volunteers including Van Sickle scraped, primed and painted the green ironwork fence that runs along the cemetery’s eastern edge – a monster of a job, Van Sickle recalled fervently.

“Believe me, this board has looked at every possibility,” Hilborn said.

In spite of these concerns, he emphasized that the cemetery will be open for business – and accepting new “customers” – “for decades to come.” According to the 19th-century arrangement, if the governing board can’t maintain the cemetery, responsibility will fall to the city.

In an email, Lee Yoakum, community affairs coordinator, said the city will work through 3rd Ward councilman Joe DiGenova, the city’s representative on the Oak Grove board, “to learn more about the financial difficulties the cemetery may be experiencing.”

The city is researching “what, if any responsibilities a city may have in reference to a cemetery,” Yoakum wrote. “It would be premature to speculate on anything else.”

The board believes a cemetery of Oak Grove’s age and distinction should remain independent. But it needs help.

People have suggested fund-raising dinners and other one-time events, Hilborn said, but circumstances call for more than a Band-Aid.

“We’re looking at long-term viability,” Hilborn said.

Asked what they want from this public appeal, Van Sickle said, “Public awareness. People who would like to help (or) maybe donate.”

Hilborn added, “We need a small dump truck with a plow. We need mowers.”

In short, Oak Grove cemetery needs friends. Friends with cash, friends with equipment to lend or donate, friends willing to volunteer.

Ringley, who’s worked at Oak Grove for eight years, said nationwide, about 30 percent of people are choosing cremation. It’s less expensive and it’s more convenient, she said.

“We understand, and it’s not that we disagree with it, but it’s a whole change in the entire industry,” she said.

Yet cemeteries remain important to the living, Ringley said.

“Cemeteries are a place for people to come back to and think about and reminisce with their loved ones,” she said. “ É You hate to see the cemetery deteriorate the way it is. There are a lot of memories here; there’re a lot of loved ones here.”

For more information, to share ideas or to donate, call Ringley at (740) 363-2971. The cemetery’s website is www.oakgrove.delawareohio.us; its address is 334 S. Sandusky St.