Army Completes Investigation at Arlington

The Army has completed its inquiry into the mishandling of remains at Arlington National Cemetery. Investigators have found two cases in which recent veterans' graves have been mismarked and 209 other cases of unclear records, mismarked graves, or misplaced remains from other historical periods (no word on whether that means Vietnam-era or Civil War-era — probably a mixture).

I'm glad that Arlington has conducted a review of their records and procedures and it sounds like they will be making some improvements to their record-keeping to guard against future errors. I hope that Army officials are being open, honest, an apologetic with the families involved in these cases. Soldiers' loved ones have been through enough and they deserve to be treated with respect.

I find this story fascinating because it confirms for me the extreme expectations of Americans regarding the treatment of the dead. Not only do we want our dead to be buried in fixed, marked locations, we expect those locations to endure eternally. This is a peculiarly modern and (as I hope to argue in my dissertation) a somewhat American-specific concern. Our impulse in these matters seems to be toward preservation and archiving — we are very uncomfortable with the concepts of decay, silence, and oblivion.

I don't mean to minimize the failures of management at Arlington. The two recent cases of mismarking are especially disappointing. Still, the Arlington records (as they are described in the CNN article) seem remarkably accurate by cemetery standards. Over 330,000 people have been buried at Arlington in the past 150 years and, having visited many cemeteries in the course of my research, I find it amazing that the investigators were only able to turn up 211 cases of discrepancies between the records and the reality. I don't think any other 19th-century cemetery would survive a similar inquiry with fewer errors.

Of course, any inconsistencies at Arlington are troubling because they seem like just one more way in which the Army fails to provide the highest standard of care for American soldiers. If you expect that a cemetery will preserve and mark the remains of individuals for all time, any failure to do so reads as an insult to the dead. I just wonder why Americans have those expectations in the first place.

February Roses

This morning, I went walking in Mount Auburn Cemetery. It was snowing, but not too cold, which is perfect for evoking Victorian melancholy without suffering too much.

Near the Mary Baker Eddy memorial, I happened across a scene that appeared to have been stolen from a 14-year-old goth's imagination:

What kind of roses still cling to the bush in February?

Connecticut Zombies

 
The Hartford Courant goes there:

New Britain Cemetery Tour Will Resurrect City's History

Even Shakesville's Got the Cemetery Fever

The recent eruption of cemetery news has even reached the non-history blogs I read!

If this keeps up much longer, I'm going to have to find something even more obscure in which to specialize. Such is the inclination of the grad student.

More From Salon

The third article in Salon's series on "grave offenses" at Arlington National Cemetery is out today. I've been unimpressed by the series so far, but the newest installment does contain some actual examples, rather than vague allegations.

In 2003, Arlington workers dug into a plot that they thought was empty, only to find an unexpected casket there. The remains are still unidentified. The situation is unacceptable, but, as far as anyone knows, it is an isolated incident.

I don't mean to defend Arlington's director — he sounds like a tyrant — but I'm still not convinced that this constitutes the "malfeasance" that Salon alleges. The fact that the investigation has found only one screw up at such a gigantic, multi-century cemetery speaks to the generally high level of competence and care at Arlington. As the cemetery spokeswoman quoted in the article notes, the situation reemphasizes the need to update the records system, which is an ongoing project.

Of course, all efforts should be made to identify this unknown soldier. If they cannot identify him/her, he/she should be honored by burial in the Tomb of the Unknowns. There's an open spot.

I wonder how this story would have been different if Mark Benjamin and Salon had approached it in a less sensational, less confrontational way. Instead of accusing Arlington of "malfeasance" and punning about "grave offenses," Benjamin could have used the story of this newly discovered unknown soldier to explore Arlington's personnel troubles, budget limitations, and grave decoration policies. Instead, he went in guns blazing, screaming scandal. Instead of producing a well-written, insightful investigative report (like this one), he created a breathless, sensational piece. Piggybacking off the truly horrifying situation at Burr Oak is insensitive and irresponsible.

Salon is one of the organizations trying to prove that new media can do investigative journalism just as effectively as traditional newspapers. This series is not helping to make that case.

More Cemetery News

Apparently, cemeteries are the new Michael Jackson. I've never seen so much cemetery news in so many prominent outlets in the same week. On the heels of the Burr Oak tragedy and the unproven allegations against Arlington, the New York Times has a front-page (of the online edition) piece on Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The historian in me is very pleased. The hipster in me wonders when all of these tourists will go away.

Mementos at Arlington

I've been reading Salon's series on "Grave Offenses" at Arlington National Cemetery and I have to say, I'm pretty underwhelmed. Despite the author's outraged tone, there seems to be little cause for the sensational titles. Coming in the wake of the Burr Oak disaster, I think it's somewhat irresponsible of Salon to sensationalize this series which, as far as I can tell, has uncovered no malicious intent or actual wrongdoing.

The first installment made a few serious (though unsubstantiated) accusations — some bodies are not buried beneath the correct headstones — that, if true, are truly troubling. Other complaints — the computer database project is taking longer than expected — are par for the course and hardly outrageous. The boss sounds like a jerk, and, should the investigation find that he did mistreat his employees, he should be punished. That said, Salon presents no evidence to back up its most sensational claims about the actual treatment of bodies at Arlington.

Today's follow-up piece examined the treatment of mementos left at veterans' graves. The author, Mark Benjamin, writes in high dudgeon about personal artifacts being "trashed" at Arlington, rather than catalogued and preserved as they are at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial:

The sun was out after several days of rain . . . Left out in the rain to rot were crayon drawings by children who had lost a parent, photographs of soldiers with their babies, painted portraits and thank-you notes from grade-school kids to fallen soldiers they had never known. Colors of artworks ran together. Photos were blurred and wilted. Poems and letters were illegible wads of wet paper. A worker in a brown uniform wandered among the graves, blasting the headstones with a power washer without regard to what was left of the mementos -- or the obviously uncomfortable mourners looking on. Some items got further soaked. The worker blasted others across the grass. Many of them would end up in a black trash bin in the cemetery's service area.

Benjamin goes on to interview family members who are "distraught" to discover that their grave offerings are destroyed after they are collected during regular cemetery maintenance. He is shocked at the paltry collection of artifacts preserved by cemetery staff — medals, uniforms, children's drawings — which pales in comparison to the vast collection of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. "What war stories had been lost forever? What words from a father to a son or wife to a husband were sitting in some landfill? What meaningful personal artifacts had been relegated to the Arlington trash bin?"

Benjamin has two major objections: the artifacts are treated disrespectfully and they are not being preserved for posterity. The first seems quite overblown — he admits that he visited after several days of heavy rain and the "disrespect" he witnesses seems to consist mainly of soggy letters that have blown about. Does he want Arlington to build a dome? And yes, items left at graves are often removed and discarded in order to keep the cemetery uncluttered. I don't think that this comes as a surprise to anyone. The word "trashed" seems harsh, but I haven't read anything that suggests to me that the Arlington staff has treated grave offerings with callous disregard.

The second complaint is more interesting to me. As an historian, I'd love to see every artifact ever created preserved, but that's a very selfish impulse.

I started out on Benjamin's side, but his over-the-top indignation lost me by the end of the article. His major complaint is that Arlington's collection policies are not the same as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial's. Of course they aren't. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial's policy of collecting, cataloguing, and preserving every photograph, flower, and teddy bear left by visitors is extraordinary, not routine. The collection is vast and growing and is already a valuable resource for scholars.

Benjamin laments that no similar collection exists at Arlington, but that strikes me as an unreasonable standard. No cemetery saves all of the grave offerings — how could it? Set aside the logistics of collecting artifacts from Arlington's 600+ acres vs. the VVM's 500 linear feet, set aside the logistics of cataloging and preserving all of those tons of artifacts, set aside the fact that Arlington has never made a commitment to building a collection (in fact, they ask people not to leave items other than flowers). Should Arlington save the offerings? I'm not so sure.

What is the function of a grave offering? Is it meant for the historian's eye? Or does the historian commit an act of violence merely by gazing? Does it do its work in an archive? Or is it the exchange between the bereaved and the beloved that matters?

As historians, we want to know everything, read everything, and speak for others. We want to dig below the surface, expose everything to the light, claim understanding. It is very hard for us to accept the sacredness of silence and the utility of decay. I would like nothing better than to dig up every body in the slave section of the Newport Common Burying Ground and count the beads, examine the bones, analyze the offerings. What stories I could tell! But I have accepted that those offerings are not for me. It's why I don't support the idea that gravestones should be removed from cemeteries in order to preserve the art — decay is part of the life of that object and it can never mean the same thing in a museum as it did on a hill overlooking the harbor.

Why should we save a letter left on a soldier's grave? Why is it disrespectful to let it dissolve in the rain, soak into the soil, or fly away in the wind?

Benjamin's article reminded me of a seminar I attended when I was in high school at a local historical society. A preservationist from the SPNEA was speaking about preservation techniques for textiles and furniture to an audience of amateurs with attics full of family relics. The preservationist's specialty was quilts, and her eyes widened with wonder when one elderly woman brought forward an ancient quilt that had passed from generation to generation in her family. It was a beautiful quilt — intricate, colorful, and very, very old by quilt standards. When the woman started talking about how their family uses the quilt for their annual family picnic, the preservationist's eyes just about fell out of her head. There was a lot of stammering about wrapping it mylar and NEVER EVER taking outside ever again. The woman looked at the preservationist like she was crazy and said something along the lines of, "everyone in my family for eight generations has sat on this quilt, and you'd better believe it's going to see nine and ten."

What is the value of a quilt? Should it be protected from moths and studied by professors? Or should it decay with use by a family that values it for what it means to them, not for what it tells us about the social and cultural history of quilting?

I'm a professional scholar of material culture. I love an old quilt. I love an old letter. If I had a box full of grave offerings from the 18th century, I'd faint with delight. But I'm not troubled by the treatment of artifacts at Arlington as described in the Salon article. The artifacts are not preserved, but they seem not to be mistreated. What's wrong with that?

Hingham Cemetery

Last Saturday was beautiful. Since there have not been too many beautiful days this summer, I took advantage of the sunshine by visiting Hingham Cemetery. After spending nearly an hour on Rte. 3A, I was not expecting the cemetery to be lovely, but it was.

I've seen some small-town graveyards that are still in use after 300 years, but Hingham Cemetery is different. The 17th- and 18th-century graveyard has been incorporated into the landscape of the 19th-century rural cemetery to create a beautiful and interesting time-collapsed environment. In this place, gravestones from the 17th century stand just a few steps from graves so new they have not yet grown grass. It was strange, but not unpleasant.

The old section of the cemetery is located on a hill behind the Old Ship Church (1681). The oldest surviving gravestone is from 1672, with the bulk of stones dating to the latter half of the 18th century. Many of these gravestones were carved by the Pratt family, whose tiny, bewigged and bonnetted faces always strike me as funny in their exaggerated solemnity.

If you visit Hingham Cemetery, don't overlook the 19th-century sections. It's no Mount Auburn, but there are some lovely monuments, including the marble statue of Civil War-era governor John Andrew.

Yikes

 On the heels of the Burr Oak fiasco, Salon is running an article on possible misconduct at Arlington.

Grave Desecration in Chicago

Four people have been charged with felonies after excavating and reselling graves in Chicago's historic Burr Oak Cemetery. According to CNN, these cemetery employees dug up about 300 graves in the oldest section of the cemetery and dumped the remains in the far corners so that they could resell the plots. The CNN article doesn't say whether tombstones were removed or destroyed.

This is obviously a terrible situation for the families and the whole community. It's also a good lesson for those of us who spend time in historic cemeteries — if you see something strange, don't be afraid to report it to the local historical society or police.

UPDATE:
More details are emerging about this ghoulish crime, including the shocking revelation that a fund set up to erect a monument to Emmett Till was drained. Some news organizations are reporting that Till's coffin was also found in a shed, but it is unclear whether that has anything to do with the scam — Till's body was legally exhumed for an autopsy in 2005 and reburied in a different coffin.

UPDATE II:
It appears that Emmett Till's gravewas not disturbed — the coffin found in a shed was supposed to be part of the memorial.