ROSE CREEK — A retired minister is looking for someone to step up and help keep a local cemetery from falling back into disarray.

Father Ruben Spinler, of St. Peter’s Church in Rose Creek, has been volunteering for more than a decade to keep up Prairie View Cemetery about a half-mile northeast of the town. He sprays chemical, pulls weeds, mows grass and clears debris from the site.

But, Spinler said he doesn’t think he’ll be able to keep it up for long, as he is getting older.

“There’s going to come a time when I can’t do it any longer,” he said.

Spinler took his concerns to the county board Tuesday. He said he believes it would be the board’s duty to care for the cemetery if no one steps up.

When he and another parishioner started caring for the cemetery more than 10 years ago, Spinler said it was overgrown to the point that he couldn’t walk through parts of the grounds. Several graves had been moved to other cemeteries, and the ground required about $400 to $500 of repair.

“It’s totally been neglected, there’s no question,” he said.

“If I quit, I’m afraid it’s going to back to where it was, and I don’t want to see that,” he added.

Commissioner Ray Tucker said this isn’t the first cemetery to fall into disrepair in the county.

“We have more than one of these in the county,” Tucker said.

Even though no one has been buried at the cemetery since roughly 1939, Spinler and the board will look for ways to keep up the property.

“There’s nothing worse than an un-kept cemetery,” Tucker said.

Though he’s been caring for the cemetery for years, Spinler doesn’t know who owns it. He theorized it was connected to a disbanded church in Rose Creek. Prairie View Cemetery is not connected to Spinler’s former church, St. Peter’s.

The county board said they’d start investigating the matter and referred it to a committee and County Attorney Kristen Nelsen.