Cemetery

My family has been issued a $40 ticket by a speed camera set up near a cemetery in Baltimore. Whoever was driving the vehicle at the time — there are four suspects, but none of us can remember what we were doing at 8:23 a.m. on June 1 — was clocked and photographed doing 40 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone, on the northbound side of Bellona Avenue, along a cemetery. The cemetery is quite typical — everyone is dead there, except for the occasional guy with a lawn mower.

The hauntingly beautiful greensward that straddles the city and Baltimore County lines along Frederick Avenue was dedicated 71 years ago this month. Called "Little Arlington," Baltimore National Cemetery is where Boy Scouts were to arrive this evening to begin the Memorial Day custom of placing small flags on all the graves of the military veterans and their spouses interred here. Their graves are marked with uniform white tablets arranged in rows reminiscent of military formations.

After more than a week of hacking away at underbrush and weedy trees, landscape workers have tamed nearly 30 years of neglect at one of Baltimore's oldest Roman Catholic cemeteries. The 7-acre St. Vincent DePaul Cemetery, which is surrounded by Clifton Park, has emerged from its first cleanup since it officially closed in the 1980s. Workers cleared away tall grasses, unruly trees and nearly five tons of debris around four sections of askew grave markers and upturned headstones.

The setting was more than a century-and-a-half old, but the flowers were fresh Saturday, March 31 at Whipps Garden Cemetery's fifth annual Daffodil Day. "We had a lot of people, and we sold lots of flowers," said Aleta Gravelle, director of the Friends of Whipps Cemetery and Memorial Gardens. The daffodils were past their peak she said, but the grounds had plenty of Virginia Bluebells and celandine poppies. Located on St. John's Lane, in Ellicott City, Whipps dates back to 1855, and the last burial there was in 1915.

The Howard Chapel Cemetery received a marker Friday commemorating it as the burial ground of the original 1862 African-American community of Howard Chapel.On hand for the ceremony were about 60 people from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, which issued the marker, and descendants of families buried in the Patuxent River State Park cemetery."It's an aspect of heritage that's been overlooked," said George Hill, a DNR landscape architect. "We felt the need to commemorate it and make it a living piece of history."

When Johnetta Miller and Robert LeRoy Mann learned this year of plans to build a house on a vacant lot on Cedarhurst Road in Finksburg, they wondered about the old family burial plot that used to be on the site. Miller, who lives next to the property, recalled seeing two markers by her fence about 10 years ago. Mann, a former neighbor, also recalled seeing gravestones there decades ago. Calls by Miller and Mann to a member of the local historical society prompted an investigation by the Carroll County state's attorney's office into what happened to the cemetery - whether anyone illegally moved tombstones or remains.

Vandals at one of Baltimore's largest cemeteries indiscriminately toppled about 300 headstones and monuments -- some dating from the mid-1800s -- late Friday or early yesterday, police reported.The grave markers were overturned in eight of the oldest sections of the 100-acre Baltimore Cemetery, known for its distinctive castle-like gates at the east end of North Avenue at Rose Street."When you don't have respect for the cemetery and the dead, what do you have respect for?" said Joseph T. Poore, 48, foreman at the cemetery and one of the workers who discovered the damage early yesterday.

A Brooklyn Park man was punched and robbed as he walked home after work through a cemetery Friday afternoon, county police said.Richard Wright Jr., 25, left his job at the Ritchie Car Wash about 5:20 p.m. and cut through the Cedar Hill Cemetery in the 5800 block of Ritchie Highway. He was counting his money when a man behind him shouted, "Hey you!"When Mr. Wright turned around, the man punched him in the mouth and a second man snatched an undisclosed amount of money from the victim's hand.

There was not much daylight left when I made this photo at Brewer Hill Cemetery in Annapolis, which was a good thing because it made the Christmas lights stand out better. I don't know if I realized it when composing the photo, but in retrospect, I really like the way the lights divide the living and the dead in this frame. The living in this case is Lorenzo Turner, a retired U.S. Marine. Turner served in Vietnam, where he helped to evacuate civilians at the end of the conflict. He was also wounded in the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in which 241 American servicemen were killed.

Construction at the St. Mary's cemetery site in the middle of a Howard County residential neighborhood has been halted indefinitely pending a meeting between angry residents and the property owner.Residents oppose construction of two homes on a 3.2-acre lot in the heart of their Turf Valley Overlook neighborhood. County officials and the owner contend graves in the segregated cemetery are limited to specific areas. Residents claim the entire site is a burial ground.Monday, construction of county water and sewer lines to the property stopped temporarily when bones were unearthed 25 feet from two headstones in the portion of the cemetery where blacks are buried.

Maj. Robert J. Marchanti II, 48, was buried Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery. Marchanti, a 25-year member of the Maryland National Guard, was one of two officers killed last month in Afghanistan. Violence erupted in Kabul, where Marchanti was stationed, when it was revealed that copies of the Quran had been burned at a NATO base in Bagram. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the deaths were punishment for burning the Muslim holy book. Gov. Martin O'Malley ordered U.S. and Maryland flags flown at half-staff Tuesday in Marchanti's memory.

Mary Virginia "Ginny" Mudd, who had been active in Baltimore County Republican politics and served on the board of the historic Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Towson, died March 7 of pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The longtime Lutherville resident was 86. The daughter of a Methodist minister and a homemaker, Mary Virginia Battle was born in Tuscumbia, Ala. "They moved all over northern Alabama, where her father opened new churches every three years," said a daughter, Mary Virginia "Ginger" Mudd Galvez, a Baltimore writer who lives in Guilford.

Mourners of Airman 1st Class Matthew Ryan Seidler said the Westminster man had followed his dream of serving his country, found a band of brothers in the Air Force and died protecting his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan. "When we talked to him New Year's Day, it was the happiest that he had ever been in his life," his father, Marc Seidler, told the more than 500 mourners who filled the Sol Levinson & Bros. funeral home Tuesday in Pikesville. "He loved the Air Force. " Matthew Seidler, an explosive ordnance disposal apprentice, was killed Jan. 5 by a bomb in Helmand province.

Frances Louise German, a homemaker and volunteer who enjoyed collecting antiques, died Monday of heart failure at Morningside House, an Ellicott City assisted-living facility. The longtime Howard County resident was 91. The daughter of a farm laborer and a homemaker, Frances Louise Porter, who never used her first name, was born in Woodbine, Howard County. She attended a two-room schoolhouse in Woodbine, and later continued her education at a school in Lisbon. Her formal education ended in the ninth grade when she was attending Sykesville High School.

Some months ago, Howard County Council Bill 52 came up for public hearing. This bill, sponsored by the administration, would eliminate the county's Cemetery Preservation Advisory Board. This citizen board was created in 1992, at the urging of then-County Council member Vernon Gray, following the illegal demolition of graves in historic St. Mary's Cemetery (Turf Valley Overlook) during the building of houses atop and within the three-acre cemetery. The new advisory board, to be appointed by the county executive and to serve without compensation, was charged with creating and maintaining a current cemetery inventory and map, and with providing continuing oversight of our cemeteries to insure their preservation.

Considering the extent to which art defines everyday life in Italy, it's not surprising that some Italians wanted to go out in style. That's an art-historical lesson imparted by the photography exhibit "A Legacy of Love: Italian Memorial Sculpture" at the University of Maryland Baltimore County's Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. Photographers Robert W. Fichter and Robert Freidus collaborated on this documentary project shot at cemeteries in central and northern Italy. By photographing funerary monuments that were sculpted from marble between the early 19th century and the 1940s, they are able to show how different stylistic trends in the art world are reflected in this architectural world of the dead.

Neighbors James Robert Whitehead and Theresa Novak are on a grave mission: blocking an access road planned for a section of land in Columbia Hills that they believe contains an antebellum cemetery."

At its annual Veterans Day ceremony , American Legion Post 60 will lay a wreath Saturday, Nov. 12 at noon at the American Legion Memorial at Ivy Hill Cemetery on Sandy Spring Road. After the wreath laying, continue to Post 60 lounge, 2 Main St., to pay tribute to veterans of all five branches of the military forces who have served our county. 301-725-2302.

On a sunny Sunday morning, dozens of Boy Scouts began carefully anchoring candles in sand poured in paper bags and placed each luminaria on a military grave at an Essex cemetery. By dusk, more than 700 lights flickered softly in precisely spaced rows, greeting visitors at the fifth pre-Veterans Day service at Holly Hills Memorial Gardens. "We want people to realize that these are not just candles in a bag," said Shirley Robinson, chairwoman of the event. "Every one of these luminaria represents a person who defended our country, including 135 military killed in action.