Volunteers clean up cemetery
The effort to revitalize the Historic Old Eastview Cemetery continues after years of neglect.
The effort to revitalize the Historic Old Eastview Cemetery got over a dozen helping hands on Saturday as volunteers from Rome’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints joined those who have been cleaning up the cemetery for over two years.
The African-American cemetery, which covers almost 18 acres, contains about 461 graves, and among them, 50 black veterans from World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War. The cemetery is located near 2505 Callier Springs Road.
Howard Cothran, a Vietnam War veteran and Purple Heart recipient, has steadily chipped away at cleaning up the cemetery with his friend of 30 years Bruce Haynes, along with the help of additional volunteers from time to time. The duo comes to the cemetery about six days a week, starting around 10:30 a.m. most days and not leaving until dark, Haynes said.
“Once you start, you keep going at it,” Haynes said.
Cothran said when he found out about the abandoned cemetery and the former veterans interred there, “I just couldn’t leave these guys out there like that.”
With the help of the church volunteers, in partnership with the Disabled American Veterans Association, dirt and mulch were spread over the sunken gravesites, and weed trimmers were used to cut down the burgeoning undergrowth.
Though much of the vegetation has been
Bruce Haynes (left) rakes mulch out of a wheelbarrow as it’s unloaded by Maci Andrews on Saturday during a cleanup of the Historic Old Eastview Cemetery.
trimmed back along the portions of the cemetery adjacent to Lincoln Street, which runs through the cemetery but is unmarked, said RomeFloyd County Library genealogist Pat Millican, a handful of graves are still concealed on the outer reaches with no clear path to reach them.
“You can’t know who you are until you know who they are,” she said of the importance of revealing all of those buried at the cemetery.
Millican said those who may have a relative buried at the cemetery can email her at patmillican@ yahoo.com and she will add the name to the Find A Grave website.
Cothran hopes more families will take it on themselves to clean up their relatives’ gravesites, but in the meantime, he knows there’s still much work for him to do. Spencer Lahr / Spencer Lahr /
Rufus Stephens (right), who lives at a home adjacent to the cemetery, points out a grave marker that’s next to his garden to genealogist Pat Millican. Spencer Lahr / Rome News-Tribune Rome News-Tribune Rome News-Tribune
Elder Kelsey Mende of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Rome loads dirt into a wheelbarrow on Saturday.
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