ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 8, 1996 TAG: 9610080016
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: GARY ROBERTSON RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
Donald Morris moves among the dead as easily as most of us move among the living.
He plods through abandoned cemeteries, marking their boundaries. He sinks steel rods deep into the earth, prodding and poking for forgotten graves.
He collects the powdery remains of the long deceased so they can be removed with dignity to another spot.
Churches call him. Developers call him. Families call him.
One day recently, he stood in an overgrown parcel in Chesterfield County.
``This must have been the Swann family cemetery,'' he said, brushing aside the weeds obscuring several old headstones.
Morris took a step sideways and inadvertently crushed a brittle basket filled with a weather-darkened arrangement of artificial flowers.
``This is tragic,'' he said. ``Obviously, someone once cared enough about these people to put flowers here. Who knows what's happened to them? Maybe they've died themselves. Now, there's no one to come.''
No one but Morris.
He came because a developer is considering building a restaurant and other businesses in the area, and he wanted to know what to do about the cemetery.
Because the graves are relatively few and close together, Morris said, the old family cemetery will be left where it is. The development will be built around it.
It's the exception. Most cemeteries in the path of development are moved to other sites, assuming all the legal obstacles can be cleared.
Among those obstacles is the permission of the family, if they can be found.
``A cemetery is a lien on the property,'' Morris said. ``If somebody comes along and says, `Those are my great-grandparents buried there,' the landowners have to give them right of access and egress to visit the graves.''
He said more than one property deal has been soured because of that requirement. One of the most memorable involved Las Vegas singing star Wayne Newton. Several years ago, he pulled out of a deal to buy an estate in Albemarle County, because the sellers wanted to be able to visit the family cemetery. Newton suggested that such visits would be an invasion of his privacy.
Morris, 66, began moving graves when he worked for the former Frank Bliley Funeral Home, which he joined in 1957. After that business was sold, Morris joined the Joseph W. Bliley Funeral Home, where he still works from time to time as a funeral director.
``We've done a tremendous number of removals. We moved entire cemeteries when the interstate system was developed. Between here and Washington, many of those cemeteries had more than a hundred graves,'' Morris said.
Before he went into the funeral business, Morris was a teacher. His last stop before coming to Richmond was Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, where he gave former Gov. Gerald Baliles, then a student there, ``probably the only demerit he ever got in his life.''
Ruddy-faced and semi-retired, Morris is full of stories about the who's who of Richmond, ``but none of them are for publication,'' he said.
When you're in the funeral business, you learn a lot of family secrets, Morris explained, and you also learn to keep quiet about them.
The official vehicle for Morris' cemetery work is a small Ford Ranger pickup, its bed filled with stakes and probes and bright orange flags.
But when he's out trying to find a cemetery before a developer pours millions of dollars into a project, what he most relies on are his eyes and his experience.
``Periwinkle,'' he said. ``You look for periwinkle.''
``Periwinkle only grows on disturbed soil. If you're going through the woods and all of a sudden run up on a quarter-acre of periwinkle, there's a pretty good chance there was a house site or a cemetery there. And even if it's just a house site, there's probably a cemetery nearby.''
In the 1800s, Morris said, nearly every farm had a family cemetery. And if the farm had servants or slaves before the Civil War, they were usually buried just outside the family cemetery, frequently in unmarked graves.
Chesterfield County, one of Virginia's fastest-developing counties over the past two decades, has been a productive area for a man whose job is finding and moving cemeteries.
Morris said the Chesterfield County Historical Society has been particularly active in pinpointing abandoned cemeteries or graves.
Once a burial place is found, the process of declaring it as ``abandoned'' begins with a visit by someone like Morris, a licensed funeral director.
The local Circuit Court requires an affidavit from Morris stating, ``I've inspected the area, and there appears to be no evidence of care or visitation for the past 25 years, or whatever I estimate,'' he said.
``Twenty-five years seems to be a magic number for the court. Nothing in the law requires a specific amount of time.''
A lawyer is also appointed to ``represent the dead.'' He or she tries to contact any relatives and publishes newspaper announcements noting that cemetery or grave sites are under consideration for abandonment.
Once the court declares the cemetery abandoned, Morris can begin his work.
``You're getting into a sensitive thing emotionally when you're moving cemeteries. Even though they're abandoned and neglected, it's supposed to be a final resting place for someone and they are being disturbed.
``What we try to do is to accomplish the removal with as much care and decency as possible.''
Bobby Hall, general manager of the Joseph W. Bliley Funeral Home, said Morris is recognized as one of the true experts in finding cemeteries.
``He might not look like the typical funeral director when he's in the field,'' Hall said, referring to Morris' casual attire, ``but no one takes their job more seriously.
``He searches and searches till he's found every grave. It might be perfect for someone else, but until it's perfect for him, he keeps going back.''
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. A semi-retired funeral director, Donald Morris hasby CNBhelped with the removel of hundreds of graves to rescue them from
development projects and interstate highways. color.