DEL.ICIO.USThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/13/08
Oakland Cemetery has reopened. The burial ground is still battered, but better than it was in the days immediately following the March 14 tornado that rumbled across downtown Atlanta.
Some stones in the city-owned park have been restored, trees have been cut and most roadways cleared — but the reminders of that big storm will last for months, if not years.
 Hyosub Shin/AJC | ||
| Cathy Vogel, an Oakland Cemetery volunteer, leads a group of tourists from Oak Grove Kids in Lawrenceville on Thursday. The cemetery, which is opened for scheduled weekday tours, reopens its gates Saturday to weekend tourists. | ||
 Hyosub Shin/AJC | ||
| Metro Atlantans and others can now begin to visit the historic Oakland Cemetery, which is being cleaned up after tornado and storm damage in March. | ||
 Hyosub Shin/AJC | ||
| Even as visitors return to Oakland Cemetery, signs of tornado damage from March remain evident. Piles of tree limbs and other debris will slowly be hauled away, officials say. | ||
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"We've moved beyond just trying to heal" from the tornado, said David Moore, executive director of the Historic Oakland Foundation, the nonprofit organization that oversees the cemetery's care and restoration. "We want people to know we're open and they can come back."
The cemetery's weekend walking tours, suspended since March 15, resume this Saturday.
The healing so far has cost $125,000, according to figures submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The federal agency is expected to reimburse the city's Department of Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs for cutting away trees, clearing debris and repairing sidewalks, roads and walls. The cash will pass through the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, which has worked with local officials to assess damages at Oakland, the city's oldest park. Founded in 1850, the cemetery contains the remains of more than 70,000 people, from beggars to generals.
The agency will fund "no less" than 75 percent of the costs of repairing the burial ground, said Terry Ingram, a spokeswoman for FEMA. The agency is anticipating further updates detailing costs to repair monuments, she said.
The monuments are proof of how savage nature can be. The tornado, which rose after dark, toppled obelisks, ripped off stone angels' wings and pushed over stones as if they were no more than plywood walls. It toppled trees that had withstood a century's worth of winds. It left cemetery workers, city officials and disaster specialists stunned.
Repairing the 48-acre cemetery, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, could cost $3 million or more, officials have estimated. Some of the repairs cannot be hurried, either: Some trees, ripped like paper, must regrow branches.
The windfall — large limbs cut into smaller lengths, and lesser branches stacked in ragged heaps across the site — will take nearly a month to remove. The wood lines the roadways, forming debris piles so thick they'd thwart a rabbit. FEMA estimated that it comprises 766 cubic yards, or more than 70 large dump truck loads.
According to a survey, 69 trees suffered major damage in the storm.
One held a grisly surprise in its roots.
A cemetery volunteer on April 24 made the discovery — bones, nearly the color of the Earth, entwined in the roots of an oak that had fallen in the cemetery's Confederate Memorial Grounds. She was working with federal and state archaeological specialists when the remains of Aaron Nabors came to light.
Nabors, who fought in Company B, the Arkansas 25th Regiment, died Sept. 12, 1863, according to cemetery records.
Most of Nabors' remains are still in the root ball, and cemetery officials are considering the best way to re-inter the bones, said Kevin Kuharic, Oakland's director of restoration and landscapes. They plan a "blessing ceremony" for Nabors, who died at the City Barracks Hospital, he said.
Now, in late spring, there are shady spots where visitors can pause and take it all in — the graves of author Margaret Mitchell and golfing legend Bobby Jones; the great mausoleums glorying premier families; the granite lion commemorating the Confederate dead. And the stone angels, whose sightless eyes looked into a tempest.
For more information, go to oaklandcemetery.com.
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