Bill Bibby: If I meet somebody I don't know, what I've learned
throughout the years, they asked me what I do for a living.
There's a little chuckle at first, and then I'll go, I'm a
grave digger. The stories on the headstones is astronomical.
There's governors in here. There's mayors in here.
Randolph Scott. He's the first American cowboy on TV. [He] did
about 100 movies from 1928 to 1968. Like I could do a whole
history tour just in this round, first circle, section A, we'd be
here for two hours. My name is Bill Bibby, and I am the sexton
for the City of Charlotte cemeteries.
[The] term Sexton means the protector of a graveyard. [It]
came from an old church thing that was brought back. I manage
and run about seven cemeteries. And I've been here since 2015.
You have to learn archaeology. You have to learn plumbing. You
have to learn buildings. You have to learn roads. There's a
whole list of and probably 10% of my job of my job is burying
people. It's not that much. But I have to make sure that's the
most important job. Gary Frink, who's my mentor still today, he
came to me, I was coaching his son in baseball, and he goes, 'I
need you to come work for me'. And I'm like, 'what do you do'?
'I work in the cemetery', I was like, 'No'. I said, twice, 'no'.
Then he said, I'll take you to lunch. And I wish I'd got into
it a lot longer than over 20 years ago. Yeah.
Why I was chosen for my mentor, was I was very empathetic. I
understood what what other people were going through at
that time, so. There's many times I'm in front of a family
for six hours, and they will not remember my name tomorrow
because they're in such a cloud at that point in time. I help
them through that. And that's the most honorable job that I
can have. The hard part is I'm always happy-go-lucky. In this
job, you can't always be happy-go-lucky. During COVID, it
was very stressful during that time because we were doubling
the amount of people we were putting in the ground. So we
went from roughly 10 to 17 to about 35 a week. We would have
to be this far away from a family with masks on. And when
you're very empathetic, and I love what I do, it's hard not to
hug. They want to come and hug you and we have to hold back. So
as they're grieving, a hug is always good during grieving
time. We couldn't do that during COVID. So, those families are
coming back to us now and saying thanks for all what we did. So,
it's a very rewarding job.
Well, it's pretty much in my, to me, this is high priority. So
I'd rather preserve it now than have more of a problem later.
We have crystal acid we put on it for stubborn. I'm going to
call this pretty stubborn. And as the days go on, maybe this
morning sun hits it. It'll get shinier every day. Brighter and
The most rewarding part about this job is a hug. Believe it or
not. Little old lady is 76 years old and and just wraps her arms
around me and says, 'Billy, you take care of my husband'. And I
say 'I will'. Those are the ones that grab my heartstring.