A committee from the Charlottesville community is resurrecting a plan to restore the city's publicly-owned cemeteries. Interested members met for the first time Monday at City Hall to develop a plan to map out the burial plots.
Sweet Briar College research professor Lynn Rainville has spent the better part of a decade documenting hundreds of plots in Charlottesville's public cemeteries. "Cemeteries are important cultural resources," said Rainville. "I see them as outdoor museums."
That's why Rainville is becoming active in the new committee to preserve the city's three historic cemeteries - Oakwood Cemetery, Maplewood Cemetery, and Daughters of Zion Cemetery.
"If they're in ruins or vandalized, or if people don't know they're out there or never spend time walking through the graves, then it's a wasted opportunity and wasted resource," said Rainville.
The committee, led by UVA architecture graduate student Kristin Rourke, is creating a plan to document the conditions of grave markers and find family members who own the plots. "It's just sort of disrespect in general," said Rourke.
City parks crews are only responsible for maintenance. They're requesting Charlottesville City Council fund $150,000 over three years to repair things like gates, roads, and cemetery walls.
The committee of researchers, historians, and neighbors hope to work together with the city and families of buried loved ones to bring respect back to these hallowed grounds.
Rourke said, "The goal of this committee is collaboration - to try to get all the people who have been working on it before to come back together."
One of the committee's goals is to get all the names, conditions, and locations of the graves into one searchable database. The committee will meet again in March.
