Top Stories
(2008-07-23)
Photo by Ben Brown
Amb:
The Rev. Douglas Sands is walking through poison ivy and thick weeds on a sweltering summer day. He points toward the crooked, eroded grave marker of Henrietta Ayres. The only engraving visible after decades of time and neglect is her name and a symbolic index finger pointing toward heaven.
IC: It tells about her. It is in memory of her, but it tells something about her that we no longer can discern here. But there's a message about her engraved here. If it were possible to find some person or some way that some layover can be made that you can get the message out that was on this tombstone.
Sadly, Rev. Sands points to hundreds of other grave markers in the same condition, some worse. And that's only the ones he can see. As board chairman of the Mt. Auburn Corp., Rev. Sands and a group of other older men have been coming to the cemetery for a few hours each weekend since April to excavate their past.
Amb:
Armed with weed wackers and chain saws, they are trying to make a dent in the blight.
Rev. Sands had this to say.
IC: Many of the graves, as you can see by the dates that are on them, are here from a long time ago. Families moved away and there's no one left to tend to them.
Mt. Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1872 by the Rev. James Peck, of the city's historic Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church, where Frederick Douglass once sang in the choir. At the time, segregation laws made this cemetery the only final resting place in Baltimore for black residents. Here, graves hold freed slaves and local African American dignitaries like civil rights activist Lillie Carroll Jackson, lightweight boxing champ Joe Gans, the state's first black U.S. Senate candidate, William Ashbie Hawkins, and the founder of the Afro-American Newspaper John Henry Murphy, also a former slave.
Sherman Harris, president of the United Methodist Men for the Baltimore-Washington Conference, was drawn to the cemetery out of respect for the past.
TAPE: (18 SECONDS), track 50, 00:14
IC: We're trying to recover what was. As you can see, the trees, bushes have overgrown the monuments and we cannot honor our dead that way. It's a disgrace. But you know what? In God's time, it will work.
Harris, age 75, sits in the front seat of his van. He is worn out from the heat. As he downs a bottle of water, he wipes sweat from his face and neck. He explained why his work here is important.
TAPE: (15 SECONDS), track 50, 1:06
IC: This is the earthly representation of a job well done by a pilgrim in a foreign land called Earth.
He and volunteers say their work could take months, even years. And it could cost tens of thousands of dollars to restore the monuments and grounds.
TAPE: (15 SECONDS), track 50, 00:38
IC: If you don't know where you been, how you know where you going? The past is prologue. My sense is that you live in the present, you look at the past and you visit the future.
Amb: track 61, 00:01
Using a chainsaw to cut down trees and bushes that stretched 20-feet tall, Morris Hawkins was working to uncover a dilapidated mausoleum. A map of the 38-acre site showed it was located in the center of the cemetery. Yet the building remained hidden. Hawkins spoke of the delicate work.
IC: I am very moved. I certainly don't want my blade to hit any of the tombstones. I enjoy working here.
In 2001, Mt. Auburn Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. That both stuns and moves the Rev. Paul Papp, who fought through a thicket of raspberries and poison oak like a detective armed with a lawn blade. He found yet another treasure, which he described with awe.
TAPE: (07 SECONDS), track 67, 00:27
IC: A tombstone that was so overgrown, we didn't know it was there 10 minutes ago. And there's a lot of them all through this place.
What is the lesson here?
TAPE: (14 SECONDS), track 67, 00:45
IC: It teaches me that we need to plan ahead and not let things get to this point. And it's really unfortunate that we live in a society that doesn't respect their forbearers and I think that's part of what cemeteries are about.
Papp and the other volunteers are optimistic that their work will make a difference here. They have pledged to return each weekend until the job is done.
I'm Melody Simmons, reporting from Mt. Auburn Cemetery, for 88.1, WYPR.
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