PORT LAVACA - The Port Lavaca Cemetery isn't a dreary place. The verdant green grass is kept short and neat, and the graves are decorated with flowers and lined with flower pots, fat cherubs and statues of the Virgin Mary.

Lefty Saenz, president of the Port Lavaca Cemetery Association board, is determined to keep it that way.

"All of us on the board of directors have personal interest because we have loved ones here and we want to keep it nice and clean and presentable," he said. "Part of me is buried in there," he said, gesturing at the grave of his son.

Saenz chose to bury his son, David, here because it was the kind of place where people would want to come visit.

Saenz and his wife were still reeling when they chose the plots, just inside the entrance of the cemetery where David would be near passers-by. Their youngest son had died suddenly at 24, and they were scrambling to choose a plot as the body was being brought home by David's siblings.

Now, Saenz and the rest of the board are struggling to figure out how to keep the cemetery the way it is now.

In September, the association mailed an emergency appeal asking for donations because their revenue source had diminished to the point they were unable to make payroll.

People have been burying their loved ones in the Port Lavaca Cemetery since the cholera epidemics swept through the area in the 1840s. At least one veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto is buried there, along with veterans from both sides of the Civil War.

For years, the city oversaw the cemetery, but in the 1970s they handed the job over to the Port Lavaca Cemetery Association, a nonprofit organization created to make sure the place was kept up well and kept nice looking.

The organization was funded by the interest from an endowment established at the time the association was created. For years, the association sold burial plots and charged fees for opening the plots for funerals, but their main funding came from the interest.

When Saenz joined the board in the 1990s, it had its financial ups and downs but always made it through. If the interest rates dropped, they could always count on donations from those who had family buried in the cemetery while bringing in money from selling plots and other services.

Still, the interest was how the organization paid salaries for a salesman and two groundskeepers required to keep the cemetery, which spans eight city blocks, looking trim.

In the wake of the financial crisis, that safety blanket was gone. Where cemetery associations used to get 7 or 8 percent interest, banks now offered as little as one percent.

Cemetery associations across the state have faced challenges because of this change in recent years, Jim Kennerly, of the Texas Cemetery Association, said.

"It's been a challenge for a lot of associations across the state," Kennerly said. "The people who are buried there, their families are gone and there's no real interest. People move away, people died and whereas 20 years ago there might have been a group with a real strong interest, you don't necessarily have that any more."

The Texas Cemetery Association represents more than 200 cemetery associations across the state, Kennerly said, noting that a number of other associations have found themselves in similar situations because of the low interest rates.

Often, communities have stepped up to the task of helping keep the cemeteries in good shape.

"When your endowment is not sufficient, that's one problem, but when you don't have the support of the community, that's another setback," he said.

Tommy Fagg, president of the Crescent Valley Cemetery Association, said his association faced similar problems when interest rates dropped. The association has managed to stay on an even keel through careful planning, savings and donations.

The cemetery has a memorial day every year where family members are invited to come and decorate the graves and then attend a meeting about the financial state of the cemetery. Getting family and community members involved is key, Fagg said, because if young people are raised to take care of cemeteries, they'll pass that tradition on to their children and keep these small cemetery associations alive.

"The young people have no interest in cemeteries anymore. I don't know of anything you can do to get them interested," he said.

There were some lean years, but the association used money previously set aside to make it through those years, Fagg said.

"We're not going broke today or tomorrow or in the next 10 years. We're in good shape. I'm not worried about it," he said.

The Crescent Valley association figured out how to manage things and now that's what the Port Lavaca association is struggling to do. Saenz and the rest of the board are trying to find the funding to keep paying the groundskeepers and salesman who run the place.

The board wants to keep it from becoming the kind of cemetery Saenz and his wife sought to avoid when choosing plots for their son and themselves - an overgrown place where it will seem that those buried there have been forgotten.

"If the day comes that we can't do this, I don't know what we'll do," he said. "We can't just let weeds grow. That would be terrible."

• Call 361-552-1313 for more information about the Port Lavaca Cemetery Association.