DEL.ICIO.USTrees torn apart, headstones toppled at Oakland Cemetery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/17/08
Something so violent should have had a name. Instead, it came unannounced to the city of the dead.
The tornado that hit Atlanta Friday night rumbled over the brick wall where Oakland Cemetery rests on the edge of downtown. It swirled along a northern wall and then switched track, sweeping into the rolling expanse where 7,000 Civil War dead are buried.
 John Amis/Special |
| A marble monument to Civil War governor Joseph Brown lays on the ground as Georgia State History professor Charles Steffen photographs the rest of the monument in Historic Oakland cemetery Monday. |
It tore apart trees. It toppled headstones. It tumbled over the potter's field where the unknown poor are buried. It tipped a final oak tree at a corner close to the intersection of Memorial Drive and Boulevard before turning its fury on the living.
It hit hard at one of Atlanta's cultural gems. Cemetery officials estimate the burial ground sustained $3 million to $4 million in damages.
The 48-acre park, founded in 1850, is Atlanta's oldest municipal park. It contains the remains of about 70,000 people, including those of author Margaret Mitchell and former Mayor Maynard Jackson. It the resting place of businessmen, philanthropists, soldiers, the acclaimed and the anonymous. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The storm destroyed about 70 trees, from 65 to 130 years old. It upended some and snapped others like small sticks. It knocked over hundreds of monuments. They ranged from a 40-foot column to stones a child could sit on. The tornado smacked two buildings — one, hit by hurricane-force winds, surrendered its shingles; the other, hit by a falling oak limb, surrendered its roof.
The tornado blew the head off a marble angel. It kicked over a cross that had stood in the same spot since 1899.
It left Kevin Kuharic stunned. On Monday, Kuharic, Oakland's director of restoration and landscapes, walked paths littered with evidence of destruction: torn bits of insulation, tattered shingles, tiny pieces of granite and marble. It also deposited proof that the storm had visited other spots first: the plastic base of a telephone, flashing grabbed from a building, legal pads with writing no one recognized.
Kuharic paused at the cracked remnants of an obelisk erected to John Gramling, born in 1832. The soggy corpse of a sparrow lay nearby. Until Friday night, the stone had not moved since 1890. Now, it lies on the ground in two pieces, each the size of a grown man.
"This is just devastating," he said.
The devastation was random, capricious. The tornado denuded a magnolia tree before blowing off its major limbs — but didn't tear away the cemetery's flags. It plucked two boxwood bushes from their perch along a stone wall — but didn't bother the greenery between them. The tempest twisted the head off a stone angel at a column erected in 1891 to the memory of former Georgia Gov. Joseph Emerson Brown — but didn't shred a leaf from a nearby willow oak.
The stone casualties included an obelisk honoring the life of Patrick Lynch, an Irishman who came to America in 1847 with his brothers, John, James and Peter. On Monday, his great-great grandson, Charles Lynch, came to check on the old man's plot.
When he first heard about the tornado's path through Oakland, "I kind of had a cold chill go up my back," said Lynch, who lives in Dunwoody. "We [family members] were all concerned."
The city is committed to repairing the park, said Sharon Davis, public information manager for the city's Department of Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs.
"It [Oakland] has a lot of value to the city," she said. "It's beneficial to visitors as well as neighbors."
That's reassuring, say Oakland officials. But words are only the beginning in a rebuilding process that may take years. It will take months to remove the trees, said Kuharic.
Compounding the work: Oakland is a patchwork private and public property — family plots in a city-owned park. Assessing the damage may be difficult. State preservation officials were on the site Monday afternoon.
"We're still discovering stuff," said Kuharic. He eyed a shard of marble so brilliant that it must have been broken in the tornado. "It [the inventory] is bound to go up."
And don't forget the what the earth may surrender. Some trees lying on the ground still have roots in the soil. Those tendrils may be wrapped around coffins.
Workers will have to be careful, said Kuharic, to dig up only roots from the city of the dead.
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