It was the kind of brilliant October day that speaks to life, not its end. The temperature was in the mid-60s and the sky an unblemished blue as Jim Reynolds gathered with family and friends on the second Saturday of the month at Woodstock Cemetery to bid farewell to his life partner.

It was only later, after her grave had been filled, that he realized she had been buried in the wrong spot. His sister compared the location to the family’s documentation and found the error.

“She was like three plots over,” Reynolds said. “I wanted to throw up.”

The mistake, and the dispute that led to the woman’s reinterment, exposed how much cemetery record-keeping can rest on aging maps, paper deeds, and institutional memory. It also pointed to a larger issue in Woodstock: how a town manages a historic cemetery after the private association that once ran it collapses. Woodstock assumed control of the cemetery in 2018, after its governing board dissolved amid rising costs and falling revenue, folding burials, plot records and upkeep into municipal operations that officials now say are being modernized in the wake of the October 2025 error.

Founded in the 1830s on Rock City Road, Woodstock Cemetery is one of several burial grounds in town, alongside the Woodstock Artists Cemetery and smaller family plots and graveyards scattered across the community. The hillside cemetery, with views toward Overlook Mountain, is the resting place of prominent Woodstock figures including Levon Helm and Rick Danko of The Band, among others whose names trace the town’s cultural and civic history.

Former Town Supervisor Bill McKenna, who oversaw cemetery operations at the time, said the problem stemmed from inconsistent cemetery maps.

“We scratched our heads because it lined up with other rows,” he said. “There was enough confusion that we decided that if it would make the family feel more comfortable, we would move the casket.”

McKenna said the supervisor’s office handled deeds, plot sales and burial coordination, while the clerk’s office handled payments. He said the maps the town used had been handed over by the cemetery committee, an advisory body to the Woodstock Town Board that recommends cemetery improvements, reports periodically, and may help raise funds with town consent, but has no authority to direct town employees.

Under Supervisor Anula Courtis, McKenna’s successor, the town has changed its burial procedures, handing more responsibility to the maintenance department. Courtis said those changes are part of a broader reorganization of the town’s maintenance and parks operations—her new plan for parks and recreation that requires town board approval—that would more clearly define responsibility for cemetery work.

“What we’ve changed very swiftly is we have maintenance more involved in the process,” Courtis said.

In addition, she said, the town is relying more heavily on an employee with deep familiarity with the cemetery grounds.

“We have somebody who knows that cemetery like the back of his hand who lives there,” she said. “He knows every area of those grounds.”

Courtis said the town also plans to conduct a cemetery audit with Councilmember Reggie Earls, the liaison to the cemetery.

“We can match that to the deeds, and we can match that to the names that are there,” she said.

Upkeep does not account for much of the town budget. In Woodstock’s proposed 2026 budget, cemetery-related requests total $10,500, including $3,000 for full-time cemetery labor, $2,500 for burial expenses, $1,500 for cemetery property maintenance and repair, $3,000 for the cemetery mower and $500 for gasoline. That amounts to about 0.14% of the town’s $7.28 million budget.

About two weeks after the mid-October ceremony, the town paid a professional vault crew to move the casket to the family’s deeded plot.

“He came back and apologized profusely,” Reynolds said of McKenna. “The family decided that she needed to be in one of my plots in that plot. And then I could be next to her later.”

Yet Reynolds said he still wonders whether the records are in order in a place where mistakes carry outsized emotional weight.

“There’s a lot of mess that probably needs to be cleaned up,” he said.

Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.