Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9407250062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Nine hours later, drenched in sweat and near exhaustion, the men looked back on the day's work and felt a sense of accomplishment at having cleared a couple of acres.
Branches and brush lay in huge piles around the lot, studded with tree stumps a foot across.
"We've put a good dent in it today," said Robert "Red" Barbour.
They have a long way to go.
Barbour is commander of a local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. About 20 men from the group, plus a smattering of other volunteers, pitched in to start clearing the 12-acre Springwood Burial Park, once a beautiful, well-kept cemetery for blacks.
They uncovered about a dozen tombstones, and marked them with bright pink and orange surveyor's tape.
That leaves about 988 to go, for there are an estimated 1,000 graves in the cemetery.
Barbour, a burly fellow with a thick red beard and robust sense of humor, said his group offered to help clear the black graveyard, though it might seem a little odd, given the South's history.
Soldiers from both world wars and the Korean War are buried here. "It'd be an honor to clear the graves of United States veterans," explained Barbour, who organized the day's work.
An elderly couple from Radford came. The husband had had open-heart surgery, the wife was legally blind, but still they wanted to help.
Another older man who could not work bought breakfast for several volunteers.
State Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, came by but could not stay. He was campaigning later with U.S. senatorial candidate Oliver North and had a wedding to go to. Barbour assured him it would take one weekend a month until fall to finish the task.
Why, even a man who said he was originally from New York - read: Yankee - showed up.
``I said, `We don't care,''' Barbour said. No matter who you were, if you could wield a chain saw or pull weeds, there was work for you.
"I'm telling you, they did a wonderful job," said Lindsey Martin, 65. At least six of his relatives are buried here at Liberty Road and Hunt Avenue.
"Yeah they did, it's beautiful," agreed his wife, Lera.
Martin remembers a time when 50 cars came to the cemetery for funerals.
"You pass by Fair View and Sherwood Memorial Park, all those kind of places, and you just wouldn't believe anything like this would happen there," Martin said. His family paid hundreds of dollars over the years for burial rights, grave digging and what he thought would be upkeep.
"It's a mess," said Thomas Noell. He also has kinfolk here - and friends, like Fred Olean Saunders, an Army private in the Korean War who died in 1979.
``He was an electrician. We used to call him `Kilowatt,''' Noell said. ``He was in here, but you couldn't tell nothing with all that stuff. I run right over him and didn't even know it.''
The cemetery, begun around 1910, passed through a succession of owners, and each time it slipped further into neglect. In 1992, the state sold it because taxes were overdue.
Roanoke restaurateur Joseph Abbott, unaware the property was hallowed ground, bought it at auction last month.
Noell told him about it, and since then the two have worked almost every day trying to clear some of the locust, Virginia creeper, honeysuckle and poison ivy.
Abbott plans to donate the land to the community or to a nonprofit organization, if one is formed to take over maintenance of the graveyard.
On Saturday, the two men joked and talked like longtime friends. Looking out over the tangle of shrubs and logs and brush, they pictured a stone entranceway, blacktop roads, neatly trimmed lawns, a statue of the Virgin Mary, a chapel and mausoleums.
Someday, they hope.
But today, it's back to the chain saws, axes and weed trimmers.
Cleanup continues this morning near Lincoln Terrace Elementary School, and volunteers are needed. Also, firewood and wood for fence posts is free to anyone who comes by to pick it up.
by CNB