A retired special education teacher is running a “satirical campaign to basically out-Trump Trump” for a position on the Elk Cemetery commissioners board, challenging the community service-driven incumbent in the Nov. 4 election.
With the earliest recorded burial in 1911, the Elk Cemetery board formed when the Pettit township dissolved in 1977. It is funded through a property tax levy that brought in around $13,000 in 2022.
District commissioners are generally responsible for overseeing and approving cemetery expenses and activities.
Endorsed by the Spokane County Democrats, Steven Queener, 72, said that giving back to the community, exposing hypocrisy in the political sphere and defending the constitution against foreign and domestic enemies are the key reasons he is running for the position.
“If I’m elected to the board, I will do everything possible and everything required to make sure that it stays this,” Queener said at an interview at the rural cemetery. “And I will float my ideas and see what they do.”
He added: “But the first thing I’m going to do if I get elected , I’m going to demand a recount.”
Queener plans to “out-Trump Trump” by rooting out all the “waste, fraud and abuse” in the cemetery district—not that he believes there is any, he said.
Queener said that he is running for commissioner as a politician. His opponent, the five-year incumbent Rebecca “Becky” Shannon, said she doesn’t have a political motive.
“It’s just about serving,” she said.
Shannon, 49, grew up in Elk. She and her mother—“a body builder type of lady,” Shannon said—dug graves by hand together when she was young, resulting in at least a few toys slipping into graves.
She remembers being in fifth grade, playing with a Star Wars toy with her niece in the cemetery as her mother dug a grave for another fifth -grader who was accidentally shot by his brother.
“It was pretty emotional seeing my mom do all that, and I remember having my little toys, and I had my niece with me and she lost my little Ewok in there,” she said. “I was like, ‘You know what? That’s for them, they need that with them.’ ”
Walking around the cemetery, Shannon said that she personally knows around a third of the people buried there or their families. People obviously care about the cemetery, she said, gesturing at the many headstones adorned with flags, flowers and other mementos on Sept. 24.
“These are our ancestors and that’s important to keep up. I may not know every single one of them, but it doesn’t matter. They’re a part of our history. Look at all the veterans—look at them. How important is that to keep?” She said. “But everyone’s important, not just veterans, and to keep their memory alive is huge.”
Queener, though he had only been to the cemetery a handful of times, shared a similar sentiment.
“It’s the culture and the heritage of the community, and we all want to know where we came from and whose shoulders we stand on while we’re here and that’s critical,” he said.
From a cemetery district commissioner position, Queener, who is currently battling cancer, said he wants to focus on health funding issues.
“Health is what it’s all about. Once you’re dead, you’re dead,” Queener said as his health care “adviser for the Big Beautiful Bill” Bernadine Bank, who lost a bid for Congress last year, pulled up in her car. “But we have to fight like Hell to keep people from dying prematurely when we know that there’s money and research there that’s been taken away.”
After Bank talked briefly about the impact that the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” will have on rural communities, Queener clarified that his main focus would be to fulfill the duties of the cemetery district commissioner position if he were elected—which he does not take lightly.
“I think I can balance that with the ability to make Elk Cemetery great again,” Queener said. “But from Becky’s own presentation, I think I might have to vote for you because I’m impressed with the work you’ve done in the community.”
Shannon said she has been involved with the Elk parks board in the past, along with the Elk Strong group, which supported community members who had lost their houses to the 2023 Oregon Road fire. She said the current cemetery board has done community service together for the past 20 years, describing them as a “very community-minded group of people and that’s what it’s all about.”
“I’m a busy girl. I’m not retired yet, so I am busy, but my husband says I’m the busiest person he knows because I just don’t stop,” she said. “If it’s not about work, it’s about community or my kids, or you know—I just don’t stop.”
Moving forward, Shannon wants to fix the cemetery’s falling entryway post, and look into potentially installing a columbarium for residents who are cremated.
“I came up with a plan for it and everybody is totally on board, but we have to go through the steps of getting it all done,” she said of the columbarium. “But I just would love to see it. So people could put their plaques up there, put a small garden in front of it so you could sit down and see, ‘Oh, there’s Grandma over there.’”
Regardless of the outcome of the election, Queener said that he would be interested in helping the board install the feature.
If he were elected, Queener said that he would look into human composting as a burial option, along with planting indigenous wildflowers to “carpet the cemetery” and cut back on maintenance costs.
In a final pitch for himself, Queener said that despite his cancer, he does “have a block of time where I can contribute and I’m more than happy to do that.”
“I saw this as an opportunity to step up and serve the community and talk to the issues that affect everyone,” he said.
Shannon fell back on what she has left to finish in the role and her love for the community.
“I hope I get re-elected because I do have some pull in the community and I have other places that I’m involved with and I feel like this is part of my… it’s all kind of interlocked together,” Shannon said. “I want to be involved in the community, this is a way for me to do this. I am proud to be here.”
Cannon Barnett's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact the Spokesman-Reviews managing editor.