Burial

Halloween is a time for witches, goblins, ghosts - and mysteries. One of the longest and most endearing mysteries centers on the life and death of Edgar Allan Poe.Literary critic, author, editor, and one-time Baltimore resident, Poe continues to haunt the imagination of local people. People such as George Figgs, who owns the Orpheum Cinema in Fells Point and who will be the artistic director of the soon-to-be-refurbished Grand Theater in Highlandtown."I freely admit that I am obsessed," says Figgs while in the room where Poe is believed to have died on Oct. 7, 1849.

ATHENS, Greece -- The bureaucratic notice came by mail, reminding the family that its three-year lease on the burial plot was expiring. The family was advised to contact the Athens First Cemetery to arrange for exhumation of the deceased.Lucas Zamanos, a retired banker, answered the summons expecting something more dignified for his late father-in-law than the scene that ensued -- a scene still etched in his mind seven years later.A cemetery worker wearing a surgical mask dug up the grave and, finding the body not fully decomposed, stood on it and pried it from the coffin piece by piece.

Most people today expect their remains to be grouped, in graveyards or columbariums, but also at separate, marked sites; not so, in American Indian times. Local custom called for two stages: shallow burial (or exposure), until the skeleton alone remained, and then communal burial among the disconnected bones of other persons. The word is ossuary.Over the decades, in Maryland, some three dozen Indian bonepits have turned up, and been carbon-dated at roughly 1400 to 1700 A.D. Mostly in tidewater areas, they contained as few as three persons, as many as 600. Anthropologists and archeologists prize ossuaries for their additions to today's meager knowledge of Algonkian Indian thought and culture.

TOWSON -- County police are looking for witnesses to a traffic accident that killed a pedestrian Dec. 27.Kenneth Lloyd Evans, 39, of the first block of Melanie Court in Carney was killed when a pickup truck backed out of a driveway in the 2400 block of E. Joppa Road. The truck's driver told police he did not see the pedestrian.Police are looking for the driver of a white station wagon who, according to witnesses, blew the horn several times before the accident in an effort to warn the truck driver.

The family of a 19-year-old Gambrills man who was fatally shot Thursday night after an argument outside a Millersville bar is trying to raise money for his burial, his aunt said yesterday.Jeffrey Watson was shot outside Gus' Getaway on Veterans Highway after being chased by a man he and some friends had argued with at another bar, county police said.Shot once in the torso, Watson was pronounced dead a short time later at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.Police were searching yesterday for Nathan Genorris Brown III, 25, of the first block of Nancy Ave. in Millersville, who has been charged in an arrest warrant with first-degree murder and assault with intent to murder.

SHAME. SHAME. SHAME! That's what Republicans in Congress and their co-conspirators on talk radio angrily shouted at the Clinton administration last week. Why, the dastardly cads in the White House had been selling hard-to-come-by burial plots at Arlington National Cemetery -- a military shrine -- to campaign donors!Shame, indeed. But not on President Clinton or Army Secretary Togo D. West, who had done nothing wrong. The shame belongs to those very Republicans who had wrapped themselves in ersatz patriotism to whip up veterans groups against the White House.

Reform of the state's cemetery industry appears more likely after a surprisingly cordial hearing before the House Economic Matters Committee yesterday in Annapolis.Consumer advocates and cemetery owners voiced support for bills that would establish a task force to investigate mortuaries and cemeteries and establish a state board with the power to license graveyard operators.The bills, offered by Del. Dan K. Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat, and Del. Joan B. Pitkin, a Prince George's County Democrat, also picked up support from the Maryland attorney general's office.

A Laurel cemetery has agreed to refund at least $1 million to customers who were overcharged for burial contracts, the Maryland Attorney General's office announced yesterday.The payments are to settle a lawsuit first filed by the office'sConsumer Protection Division in 1992, after it received dozens of complaints about Maryland National Memorial Park in Laurel. The cemetery will also pay the state a $100,000 fine.Assistant Attorney General Rebecca Bowman said the cemetery had been spending customer money it was supposed to hold in escrow and had been illegally charging interest on the long-term burial contracts it sells.

Most of the Christmas cards I received this season contained thoughtful messages and tidbits of news about comings and goings.There are career changes, retirements, marriages, divorces, remarriages, new grandchildren and the loss of parents.And thanks to a friend who works in the White House, Hillary and Bill wished me a ''joyful holiday season and a new year blessed with health, happiness and peace.''On December 17, I opened a letter with the seal of Maryland on the upper left hand corner.

Recently, Philippine President Corazon Aquino granted permission for Imelda Marcos to return the body of her husband, Ferdinand Marcos, to his home province for burial. In an age when increasing numbers of Americans are choosing cremation over traditional burials, the news was a reminder of the important role burial sites and ceremonies can play in human culture.That is especially true in the case of national leaders. In fact, the Aquino government had delayed burial permission since Marcos' death in 1989 in order to avoid stirring up divisive political passions.

Royster L. (Roy), Services were held October 14, 2009, at Pleasant Zion Baptist Church. Burial Services will be held in N.C.

- On Saturday, August 1, 2009, Josephine C. McMullin, Services and burial to be held in Pittsburgh. Memorial contributions may be made to St. Margaret Parish First Friday Group, 141 Hickory Avenue, Bel Air, Md. 21014.

Earl Eugene M Burial is private. A memorial service will be held at a later date.

Although not a victim of premature burial, the fate he so chillingly conceived for several of his fictional characters, Edgar Allan Poe still shows remarkable signs of life from beyond his own grave in Westminster Burial Ground, where his remains have rested since 1849. You could almost say he has been resurrected, in the form of veteran actor John Astin, who spent nearly a decade impersonating the writer in a well-traveled, well-received one-man show, and is currently developing another such project.

The first recorded interment at the Little Falls Meeting of Friends cemetery was held on Oct. 18, 1768, when Alice Anna Webster Bond was buried. There may have been earlier burials, including that of William Wilson, a leader who died in 1753. Few early records can be found for the cemetery next to the meeting house. Because Friends considered formal monuments to be ostentatious, graves were marked with simple field stones or left unmarked. After restrictions on gravestones were lifted, some grave sites were marked with modern monuments.

Donald Francis Duncan loved the sea as a kid growing up in California and he loved it throughout his adult life, when he sailed on boats with names such as the Odyssey and Vaya - Spanish for "go." Now, in death, he won't be separated from the water he so loved. Yesterday, as his two daughters clung to each other and cried, an artificial reef containing his ashes was lowered by crane into the gray-green waters of the Chesapeake Bay. The rough-hewn concrete structures, which resemble a giant Whiffle ball, are intended to help restore the health of the bay by providing a coral-like habitat for fish and other sea life.

Funeral services have been set for the three rescuers who died in last weekend's fatal medevac crash in Charles County. A viewing will be held from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. today at the Gamber and Community Fire Co., Route 32 and Niner Road, Finksburg for Tfc. Mickey Lippy of Westminster. The funeral will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the station, and burial will follow at Dulaney Memorial Gardens, 200 East Padonia Road, Timonium. Information: www.gambervfd.org. Services for the pilot, Stephen H. Bunker of Waldorf, will be conducted at 11 a.m. Saturday at South Potomac Church, 4915 Crain Highway, White Plains.

Theresa A. Gietka Burial will be private in St. Stanislaus Cemetery, Baltimore. For more information and guestbook: averystortifuneralhome.com.

On March 12, 2008, Walter Singleton, Jr; Burial will be private.

On January 10, 2008 Katherine A Funeral from the Gonce Funeral Service P.A. 4001 Ritchie Hwy. on Monday at 9:15 AM. Mass of Christian Burial in St. Athanasius Church at 10:00 AM. Interment in New Catheral Cemetery. Family requests friends call on Sunday from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 PM.