Buy a bear or a flower for your loved one

By Nicola Ceccato

Mar 21, 2024

For the loved ones: Shepparton Wanganui Lions Club members Margaret Laffy and Margaret Stewart with the small teddies for the fundraiser at the Shepparton Public Cemetery. Photo by Rechelle Zammit

Holidays without your loved ones who have passed on are never easy, but one local club has devised a way to help people commemorate their loved ones this Easter.

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The Shepparton Wanganui Lions Club is encouraging people to visit the Shepparton Public Cemetery this Easter Sunday to purchase flowers and teddy bears to place on their family members’ graves.

The president of both the Shepparton Wanganui Lions Club and the Shepparton Public Cemetery Trust, Margaret Stewart, said she hoped the initiative could bring a bit of beauty to the cemetery.

“We’re trying to make the cemetery not a sad place, which it automatically is, but I would like to show some beauty in it and that people actually do care,” Mrs Stewart said.

“We thought it would be a nice community service that hasn’t been done before and to promote our cemetery, which many people don’t realise how it looks.”

The club will sell sticks of orchids and small teddy bears with blue and pink ribbons for $5, cash only.

All money raised from the sales will go towards the community in the Lions club’s local projects.

The club will sell bears and flowers at the Shepparton Historic Cemetery on Sunday, March 31, from 10am to noon in front of the office.