Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Scouts, genealogist spruce up derelict cemetery
Shanna Flowers
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Loved ones laid the Rev. James D. Walker to rest in 1944 and later his wife, Maggie, in 1952.
An elegant, granite headstone etched with the couple's names also contains the poignant words, "Gone, But Not Forgotten."
"Those are the ones that get to you," Ann Bird, clutching a clipboard, said last week as she stepped over fallen limbs and navigated around prickly bushes in the abandoned wilderness that is Springwood Burial Park.
"Gone but not forgotten," she repeated wistfully. "I'm afraid they've been forgotten."
The Walkers' graceful, dark-gray tombstone has weathered the decades, but their resting place near Lincoln Terrace Elementary School has not.
Once a well-kept tranquil park in Northwest where black Roanokers with names such as Blanche Avery and Arthur Colson truly could rest in peace, the burial ground has become an urban wasteland unknown to many Roanokers and forgotten by others.
Everyone, that is, except Bob Bird, his wife, Ann, and their Boy Scout Troop 5 of Oakland Baptist Church.
Bob Bird, 63, doesn't own the cemetery. Yet he has made it his project.
Since November, the retired Roanoke municipal auditor and his wife have been surveying the graves one by one and using a computer to document them by location and name, when they could find a marker.
So far, they have catalogued about 250 plots and created a code to determine whether each plot is marked with a tombstone, a funeral home aluminum marker or some other means. People were buried in Springwood between 1937 and 1979.
As one would expect from a former auditor, Bird's work on the 4-month-old project is recorded in fastidious detail in a maroon binder.
A genealogy hobbyist, Bird wants to share his information with the public. He plans to provide a copy of his spreadsheet to the Roanoke Public Libraries' Virginia Room.
That way, anybody with a loved one buried in Springwood will be able to find the grave site.
"I think everybody ought to have the same chance to find their ancestors," Bird said. "I would like to see that people know as much as we know."
Ann Bird chuckled that she became involved in the project because, "I'm married to him."
Then the smile faded, and she added softly, "It just feels like the right thing to do."
The burial ground sits on an 11-acre parcel next to the school and off busy Liberty Road and Hunt Avenue.
Cars zip past the cemetery, their drivers likely oblivious to the interments of war veterans, preachers, mothers, grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers.
In addition to his wife, Bird pulled his Scout troop in as reinforcements. The youngsters collect trash while teens use hand saws to cut down locust trees.
Some of the timber will be used in projects such as bridges at Scout camp in Pulaski County.
This past weekend, the Scouts spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon outdoors. But Springwood cemetery means more to them than just a merit badge.
"People have forgotten about this place," 12-year-old Will Ostrom said as he rolled a tread-bare tire up an incline to the Scouts' trash collection point.
With the help of fellow Scout Anthony Sledd, Bradley Maxwell hauled a log from deep in the cemetery.
"It's just not right that people don't know where people are buried," 11-year-old Bradley said.
Anthony, also 11, chimed in that besides sprucing up the cemetery, their project helps clean up a piece of the universe.
"You're helping out the ozone," said Anthony, who had pitched in to help clean the cemetery in an earlier visit. "Litter is not a good thing for this planet."
In less than two hours, the Scouts had collected five garbage bags of old bottles, a pile of rusted fencing and other metal objects and three bags of foam squares still bearing the tiny holes where plastic flowers had been pushed into them decades ago.
A truck will be needed to haul out the discarded fuel tank that sits near the back of Springwood and a small, plastic playhouse that obviously had been used by someone for overnight housing at some time.
"I think it's awful," said Evelyn Hernandez, 65, standing on her porch looking across Liberty Avenue at the parcel that holds the remains of her aunts and uncles.
"They used to keep it up, and then I don't know what happened to it," she said.
At one time, the burial park was run by black funeral director C.C. Williams. After he died in 1962, it passed through a number of hands.
Bob Bird said some developers bought the land, not knowing it contained graves. That deterred their plans.
Bird learned about the cemetery about 15 years ago when the Sons of the Confederate Veterans joined the effort to clean it up with small tools.
But the heritage group pulled out when one of the members saw someone using a front-end loader pushing debris across the cemetery.
Spurred by his interest in genealogy and a desire to keep fit, Bird began regularly visiting the cemetery last fall.
He said the cataloging of the graves likely will take a few years.
The project is nearing its end for this season, he said, because as the weather warms, the forest begins growing again, making the surveying task difficult.
"You do a little here or there," said Bird, a soft-spoken man.
"I'm not strong or fast, but I'm consistent."
