Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Grave duty at Springwood cemetery
Photos by Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times
Junius Gaither (left) trims underbrush Thursday morning at Springwood Burial Park in Northwest Roanoke. Gaither was able to locate his mother's grave after reading an article that appeared in The Roanoke Times.
The marker for Junius Gaither's mother, Liller Gaither, will soon be replaced with a headstone.
Ronald Terry (left) and Jimmy St. Clair remove a tree Thursday from Springwood Burial Park. Both men have relatives buried in the Northwest Roanoke cemetery. A local Boy Scout troop began the cleanup project.
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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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Spurred by the memory of his long-deceased mother, Junius Gaither answered the call of conscience.
At 78, the Roanoke man has joined Scout Leader Bob Bird on several occasions in recent weeks to restore some semblance of dignity to Springwood Burial Park. The urban cemetery in Northwest is the final resting place of Gaither's mother and more than a thousand other area blacks who died between 1937 and 1979.
"Personally, I just marvel at the amount of work they've done," Gaither said Thursday morning as he walked along a path that Bird and his Scouts have cleared. "It spurred me to come over."
My wish is that others would follow Gaither's lead.
I wrote a column three weeks ago about Bird, his wife, Ann, and Scout Troop 5 making the cemetery a project. Bird's effort earned lots of praise from readers.
But as Gaither proves, families or friends of those buried in the cemetery can play a role in reviving Springwood.
"This is something that black people ought to be taking an interest in," the retired nursing assistant said. He's right.
Rediscovering family graves and keeping them neat would go a long way in contributing to what Bird, a retired municipal auditor, has started.
"Someone that's got a relative over here could come over here three, four times a year and maintain it," said Jimmy St. Clair, who accompanied Gaither and Ron Terry as they helped Bird last week. "It can be an asset to the city."
Since November, Bird and his wife have been surveying the graves one by one and using a computer to document them by name -- when they can find a marker.
So far, they have cataloged about 290 plots and created a code to indicate whether each plot is marked with a tombstone, a funeral home aluminum marker or some other means.
Bird expects the surveying project will take a few years. When he's finished, he plans to turn over the information to the Roanoke Public Libraries' Virginia project.
In the meantime, he has generously offered his list of documented graves to www.roanoke.com/datasphere/. Anyone interested can go to the site's Community section and search by name or year of birth or death to discover whether Bird has documented the grave.
Gaither's mother was buried in Springwood in 1957 after dying of heart disease.
"It was beautiful then, nothing like this," Gaither said, eyeing the expanse of brush and thickets last week.
He visited his mother's grave every Memorial Day until about 12 years ago when he could no longer get to it because of overgrown locust trees, brush and the fear of encountering a snake.
Even then, Gaither said, he would drive to the cemetery's edge at Liberty Road and Hunt Avenue, park and quietly pay his respects.
Three weeks ago, Gaither read the March 4 column about Bird and his Scouts taking on the cemetery project.
"I was touched by the remark, 'This just isn't right that folks not know where their kinfolk are buried,' " Gaither said, recalling a comment by one of the Scouts.
Gaither, who is married and has two adult children, contacted Bird to find out whether he had located Liller Gaither's grave. Bird had. Gaither remembered roughly where his mother was buried.
"I figured if he could find 250 graves, maybe I could find my mother's grave," Gaither said.
Because of the work Bird and his Scouts had done clearing paths and removing debris, Gaither stood at his mother's grave for the first time in more than a decade.
On Thursday, he showed up with his clippers to snip away some of the undergrowth. St. Clair, Gaither's distant relative, and Terry, a family friend, came along to help Bird cut some locust trees with a gas-powered saw. The Scouts, who use the timber at camp, use hand saws because they are not allowed to use power tools.
"It's a whole lot faster with the chain saw," Bird noted.
He paused to watch as Terry, 68, revved up the saw. St. Clair, also 68, braced the tree and then guided the direction of its fall.
"The amazing thing is all these guys say they have bad backs," Bird said wryly.
Gaither chimed in, "Jimmy, did you wear your back brace?"
Several freshly cut tree stumps surrounded the grave of Liller Gaither.
A small, metal marker from the Hamlar-Curtis Funeral Home withstood the elements and marked her grave. Gaither has ordered a tombstone that should arrive within 30 days, he said.
His plans don't stop there. Gaither plans to plant some daffodils at his mother's grave.
"Mama loved flowers," he said quietly.
Shanna Flowers' column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
