BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – There are 50,000 stories in Bakersfield’s Historic Union Cemetery. 50,000 tales of courage, despair and triumph. That’s because there are 50,000 souls buried there, and each has a story.

In advance of Memorial Day, KGET took a tour of the 80-acre site in east Bakersfield, the final resting place of thousands of members of Kern County’s founding generations. 

No entity, public or private, can claim to be closer to the soul of Bakersfield than Historic Union Cemetery – mainly because it literally occupies land that was once Baker’s Field – farmland worked by Col. Thomas Baker, the city’s namesake. 

Baker died in the typhoid epidemic of 1872, about a year before Bakersfield first became a city. He was the first person buried at Union Cemetery, but in the years that followed, dozens of other founders found their way to this resting place. Many of them we’d recognize for the streets and buildings that bear their name today – Bernard, Brundage, Planz and more.

Military veterans are, of course, a big part of Union Cemetery’s story – not just Vietnam, Korea and World War II but the Civil War, both the Union and Confederate sides, the Spanish American War, and World War I. Memorial Day is dedicated to their memory, and Union Cemetery will have appropriate ceremonies, as will others around the county and the nation.

But, as noted, Union Cemetery has many stories to tell, and not all of them are military. Many are stories of love, loss and devotion. There’s Potter’s Field, where 6,000 indigents are buried, most without markers. That includes at least one unidentified victim of an unsolved murder from 1923 – and buried with her, an infant boy.

Union Cemetery’s Jordan Kraemer knows the story well.

“This gentleman was working for the canal (management company) and he saw what he thought was a doll,” Kraemer said. “It wasn’t a doll, it turned out to be a baby – the body of a baby. And so he called the police and they do a big search and they end up finding a woman’s body as well. No one could ever identify them, no one could ever give a reason why they were there. Cold case.”

Union Cemetery has warmer stories as well. Much warmer.

Union Cemetery CEO Griselda Hurtado is particularly touched by the story of Shirley Fladeland, who died in 2021. Her husband, Kerry Fladeland, visited her grave three times a day – morning, noon and evening, until his own death last year

“He would always tell us, ‘Shirley was the love of my life,'” Hurtado said. “And he became a friend (to us all). Before he passed away he said, ‘Make sure that my Shirley is always taken care of.’ So, we knew that,” to care for her.

Debbie Ramos’s father – a Purple Heart Vietnam vet – passed away six years ago. She still visits him every week.

“He was a man that loved me unconditionally,” she said. “I miss him every day.”

Margarita Zavala buried her father Friday. She said Union Cemetery worked with her family to make it affordable.

“I’m very grateful because they really helped us a lot,” she said.

And isn’t that what it’s all about? Someone to take you by the hand in the darkest of hours? Just another day in the life of Bakersfield’s oldest cemetery.

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