In a move towards digitizing history and simplifying the way we honor the departed, the City of Cookeville's latest project has turned a traditional cemetery into a digitally navigable ground; thanks to an international intellect's tech-savvy intervention, the Cookeville City Cemetery is stepping into the modern age with an updated GIS application.
The brain behind the tech overhaul is Jennifer Nwafor – an intern remarkably from Enugu State, Nigeria, with academic laurels that include a bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and a master’s in Applied Management and Sustainability to a professional science master's in Environmental Informatics, her experience spanning 11 years in environmental management has proven to be a boon to the community development efforts - in a statement released by Cookeville's official announcement, Nwafor captured a comprehensive visual record of over 6,000 grave markers braving cicadas and heat which, surprises none considering her track record.
Cemetery management, often a task steeped in antiquity, has been given a digital facelift under Nwafor’s diligence, offering features like grave searches by various identifiers and viewing of military markers; the GIS application now brims with added utility assisting cemetery staff in preserving historical data and streamlining their operations according to feedback from cemetery manager, Rick Garrison, and groundskeepers, Wade Cooper and Gary Taylor, not only is the application a step up from its previous iteration but it also lays groundwork for a public-facing tool that showcases available plots.
In her reflections shared with the City of Cookeville, Nwafor expressed considerable satisfaction stating "Overall, the support and kindness from everyone made my internship a truly rewarding experience… and it felt great to see how my work would directly benefit the community," her venture which originally began with a wariness towards cemeteries, ended with an acknowledgment of their import for genealogy and local history; Nwafor found intrigue in the stories of Cookeville’s original settlers and the likes of Mahaley Wiley Shaw, who donated the land that paved the way for the first two acres of the current cemetery.
With Nwafor's dedication and the city's embrace of innovative practices, the Cookeville City Cemetery has set a precedence in what it means to manage a resting place not just as a space for the dead but as a living museum for those who walk among its graves – ensuring a lasting tribute to those gone and an educative resource for those who remain.
