THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 31, 1995 TAG: 9507310031
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 147 lines
Barred from going through the main gates of what had once been her family's farm, Dora Ward Sawyer used to make her way painstakingly through neighbors' back yards to the old burying ground.
During the 1960s, son-in-law Winfield Beaman often helped the elderly woman wade through waist-high weeds and climb fences to reach the small, unkempt piece of ground off Elbow Road where her family had buried its dead for at least two centuries.
Then, one day about 30 years ago, the property owner ``ran her off,'' remembers Beaman, now 75 and still incredulous at the nerve of the horse farmer.
``He said she couldn't visit the cemetery anymore, so I told her, `I'm going to get a bulldozer and open up the right of way,' '' Beaman recalls. ``She said, `Don't,' so of course I didn't, but I promised her then and there that nobody would ever take that piece of property away from her.''
That promise weighed heavy on Beaman, so heavy that when it appeared the cemetery might fall to developers' bulldozers, he launched a campaign to protect and preserve the site for future generations.
His long battle paid off.
Now surrounded by an 82-acre housing project known as Hillcrest Farms, the Ward burial ground off Indian River and Elbow roads is enclosed by a stately wrought iron and brick fence. Washed river rock overlays a moisture barrier, creating a care-free ground cover for the 51 Ward family members whose final resting place is safe from development.
The success story is unusual. It is more common, it seems, for private cemeteries to fall prey to the earth-moving equipment of developers before relatives even know what's happened.
State law requires developers to get permission from the courts to move a family burial ground. If no burial has taken place in the cemetery during the past 25 years, then the developer can consider it inactive and can petition the court for removal.
First, the developer must attempt to notify any family members by placing a legal advertisement in a local newspaper. Then the developer must get court approval to unearth the bodies and take them to a commercial cemetery where they are reinterred at the developer's expense.
Those familiar with the process, however, say that some developers apparently find ways to sidestep the letter of the law. And, they add, there are some who bypass the law entirely, leaving hundreds of historic and recent graves lying beneath condominiums, shopping malls and highways.
Wayne Flora, great-grandson of Thomas Ward, who deeded the land for a cemetery in 1880, immediately joined with Beaman in his efforts to preserve the family burial site. Land developer Goodman Segar Hogan had bought the 82 acres that once made up the Ward family plantation, and the vigilant Beaman remembered his promise. He sent letters to 30 or more family members, many of whom lived far away.
At the same time, Beaman and Flora began the daunting task of cleaning the site of fallen trees and brush and righting toppled gravestones. It was important, they decided, to bring the cemetery up to snuff because in its rundown condition it might be called ``abandoned,'' a designation that allows legal reinterment proceedings to begin. Because the last Ward burial occurred in the 1920s, well past the 25-year limit that defines the cemetery as inactive, Beaman and Flora also worried that developers might find a way to take the land.
Next, Flora, an electrical contractor, used a tool of his trade to map out individual graves. Holding a metal rod at a 90-degree angle in each hand, he walked the ground, noting when the rods moved right to left, indicating the graves beneath the surface.
Flora was unable to give a scientific explanation for how the metal-rod-detecting procedure works, but speculated that the rods are sensitive to any disturbance of the ground's natural magnetism. He had used the rods to locate underground plastic pipes.
``There was no organization'' to the burials, says Flora. Graves lie at odd angles to each other instead of side by side.
Neither does he know whether any human remains lie within the rectangles his rods detected. But that is not the issue, Flora says.
``I don't think you can just do anything'' with these old graves, he says. ``It's a travesty. A lot of the time people don't respect them, do anything they want. I've seen cases where, for the sake of money, they just push the remains up. A developer comes along and bulldozes, doesn't even go through'' the steps required by law to move what is left to a public cemetery.
``A responsible developer will take the time for proceedings,'' Flora said.
Dozens of Ward descendants gave Flora power of attorney to protect their interests in the plot, and Beaman and Flora began negotiating with Goodman Segar Hogan to preserve the cemetery.
But then Goodman Segar Hogan reorganized, and Baymark Construction bought the land. Owner Richard Foster had a sensitive approach to living - and dead - Ward family members.
``We worked with the Wards for what they wanted,'' says Foster. ``If it was my family, I'd want them to do that for me.''
In fact, Foster goes far beyond what the law requires in making sure that graves are not disturbed. Recently, for example, he came upon a Civil War-era gravesite on land he was developing. Though he ``didn't know who the heirs were and no one stepped forward,'' Foster took it upon himself to restore the old burying ground.
He took a closer look at a clump of trees in the center of a cleared field and found several headstones. A burial site ``normally looks different,'' he explains. ``The farmers know the history, and they don't farm over graves.''
But, according to Virginia Beach attorney William T. Webb Jr., Foster is an exception among developers.
``Usually what happens is the property is sold, and no one mentions the family cemetery,'' Webb said. Surveyors find it and then the developer begins the legal proceedings required to move the graves, he said.
``You never know how many are there, and sometimes you're just picking up dirt,'' Webb said, citing the case of a 25-year-old grave in which nothing was found except pieces of the white plastic which wrapped the body, part of a flower vase and a small metal plaque, which had been attached to the headstone.
It's an expensive procedure to move a cemetery, and Webb says he's only been involved in it three times during the past 18 years.
When Lois Davenport decided to visit her grandfather's grave in the Salem Lakes family cemetery about five years ago, she was shocked to find a condominium standing where the burial ground had been.
She learned that five years earlier a development company had disinterred, then reinterred her grandfather and others buried there.
So Davenport went looking for the memorial plaque that was supposed to mark her grandfather's new gravesite, but did not find his name among the few listed.
``My grandfather wasn't there,'' she says. ``He was a tax collector for old Princess Anne County. To think that the farm belonged to my grandfather. Now he's buried under the condominiums. There were a lot of people buried there. Where are they?''
Davenport says: ``Virginia Beach ought to have better rules for developers. I'd hate to see someone go through what I've gone through. It's a terrible feeling to go out and look for a cemetery and find a housing development in its stead.''
George Minns, president of the Virginia Beach NAACP, is not happy about the fact that his grandfather's remains were moved to make room for development.
Minns' grandfather was buried in a church cemetery in which someone had been interred within the past 25 years, but developers persuaded family members to move the body, then got court permission to move the rest of the graves.
Any objections on Minns' part were negated by his uncle, who had the final say regarding Minns' grandfather.
``Some wheeling and dealing appears to have been involved,'' says Minns. ``In that case, it should not have been done.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by CHARLIE MEADS, Staff
Winfield Beaman, left, and Wayne Flora worked with a developer in
the Hillcrest Farms area of Virginia Beach and saved a 200-year-old
cemetery.
KEYWORDS: PRIVATE CEMETERY by CNB