A volunteer reveals a grave marker previously covered with dirt and vegetation. (Photo courtesy Enrichmond)
Summertime at Evergreen Cemetery means “battling Mother Nature,” says longtime volunteer John Shuck. “It’s pretty much just maintenance this time of year, especially with the foot of rain we’ve had this summer.”
Shuck, a retired IT technician, is part of an ad hoc group of college students, family members and community volunteers who have stepped in during the past several years to clear weeds and bramble from the 19th-century African-American burial place and its sister cemetery, East End, after they fell into disrepair during decades of neglect. Many are now members of a committee shaping a grand vision for the hallowed spot.
The 25-member committee, which includes descendants of famous Richmonders buried at Evergreen, such as Maggie Walker and John Mitchell Jr., will work on a master restoration plan with the Enrichmond Foundation, Virginia Commonwealth University and design consulting firm Stantec, to be implemented starting in September 2019.
Convened in June by Enrichmond (a nonprofit that supports Richmond’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities), this committee will lead discussion on a range of issues — among them roads, parking, on-site signage, identifying lost graves and creating a searchable database for visitors. Committee members are also expected to engage the public and solicit feedback on restoration plans. Enrichmond purchased Evergreen last year and is negotiating to purchase neighboring East End Cemetery. When that happens, the advisory group will be expanded to include East End stakeholders.
“There will be a slew of community conversations happening in September and October in various libraries, churches and community centers,” Enrichmond’s Ted Maris-Wolf, the Evergreen caretaker, says. "We will also have online surveys. We are ready to meet the people where they are."
The first three community conversations will be held:
- Saturday, Oct. 6, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, 122 W. Leigh St.
- Tuesday, Oct. 9, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Richmond Public Library's Main Branch, Annex, 101 E. Franklin St.
- Thursday, Oct. 11, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Neighborhood Resource Center, 1519 Williamsburg Road.
For the full schedule, visit enrichmond.org.
“The goal here is to try to restore some of the formal beauty of the original cemetery so that people can come and visit loved ones and have a peaceful place to reflect,” says the Rev. H. Creed Taylor of The Saint Paul’s Baptist Church. Taylor is a committee member who has several relatives interred at Evergreen, including his great-grandfather Coleman Chisum Smith, who fought for the Union in the Civil War.
"We're taking baby steps right now," he says of the committee. "We're still in crawling mode."
The first question being tackled: What kind of restoration should this be?
"Is it just a restoration of a cemetery?" Maris-Wolf asks, "Or, more broadly, is it the restoration of a historic site or historical park, a place of education that would include a structure for school tours? And if so, what does that look like? And how does that get created, or recreated, in this sacred space?"
In addition to input, there is also a call for more volunteers to help do the dirty work that volunteers such as Shuck have done in their spare time for years. Interested persons are encouraged to show up on Saturday mornings from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. ready to work.
"We just had a big group come out from the West End Assembly of God," Shuck says. "I had about 100 out there with weed eaters, mowers and they got a lot cleared, some of it down to the bare dirt. There's a children's section there and they cleared that up and even found a few [buried] markers."
Taylor says he will be reaching out to Church Hill-area churches in an effort to build a bigger network of Saturday-morning volunteers. The 60-acre site “requires a great deal of manpower to maintain. We want people to get involved, not for just one day but as much as they can. Churches, social groups, students, family members, everybody ... we need your help."
