Oak Hill Cemetery has a past as rough-and-tumble as the region itself.

From the time it was officially founded in 1885 to provide burials within the boundaries of the newly incorporated city of Hammond, Oak Hill has been a cemetery in transition.

What began as a Catholic cemetery was expanded acre-by-acre through donations from the city’s founding families and finally the sale of 3.5 acres of the now-vacant old St. Joseph Church.

Through 1961, the cemetery’s evolution is orderly — vigorous sales campaigns make Oak Hill a popular choice for city residents. That all changes in 1962 when Oak Hill Cemetery Co. President M. Morton Towle dies and a still-unknown owner takes over. Two years later, banker John Wilhem and realtor Warren Reeder purchase Oak Hill due to lax record-keeping.

When Reeder dies in 1976, the cemetery loses its patron and once again falls into disrepair. Without a traceable owner, plots are resold, tombstones are discarded and funeral dollars paid in advance go missing. Ownership of the cemetery is transferred — the result of Roy Roark’s winning hand in a local poker game.

It would be another 16 years before a respectful owner would be found to bring order to a century of intermittent neglect when North Township Trustee Frank J. Mrvan took title to Oak Hill in 2012.

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