Community Corner

New Golf-Themed Memorial Park to Open at Sunset Hills

The Bellevue memorial park will allow avid golfers to memorialize their passion and will likely be replicated at other sites around the country.

For those who practically live at the golf course, there is now a way to spend the afterlife in the presence of that favorite pastime.

 and Funeral Home in Bellevue has designed a new Memorial Golf Park where golfers can have their passion for the links memorialized at their life's end.

“Some people have said, I always find myself in the sandtrap, anyway,” said Hank Kerns, Sunset Hill's general manager.

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The golf-themed area of the park will look like a golf hole and green, complete with a sandtrap, where people can reserve space for their interment.

Kerns says that as far as he knows, this is the first golf-themed memorial site. The concept was inspired a couple of years ago when one of the park’s own golf-enthusiasts noticed an impromptu golf memorial ceremony at a local golf course, he said.

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Arne Swanson, Sunset’s market director, saw a group of golfers spreading the ashes at a local golf course, probably without the permission of the golf course management.

“So it sparked an idea,” Kerns said. “A lot of people would probably want to do that.”

By offering a site reminiscent of that personal passion, Sunset could also provide a place where people could go and honor the memory of their favorite golfer.

The new area will take up 12,000 square feet of undeveloped land at the memorial park. The Golf Memorial Park is located on sort of the back nine of Sunset Hills, next to a wooded area on the back side of the park.

“It’s not intrusive; it’s framed in by nature. We tried to make it as realistic as possible,” Kerns said.

Kerns says it was designed to accommodate as many as 1,300 sets of remains or ashes—including under the sand trap or in an ossuary under the bronze replica of a golf cup.

People already have made reservations, he said, and the section can be expanded in the future if demand dictates. Other memorial parks operated by Sunset’s parent company, Dignity Memorial, already are considering replicating the idea, he said.

Sunset also has other themed areas on its site, including for veterans, various ethnic groups, and areas that people select based on Feng Shui principles. The 60-acre park has 23 acres available for future development, Kerns said. He said the Golf Memorial Park is one example of how Sunset seeks to offer options for its clients and their families.

“What we strive to do here is provide every person’s life ending the possibility to define their life,” Kerns said.

People can check out the new area of the park at an opening ceremony from 2-6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25.


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