Taphophilia.(dot) Com - Search for burials at Star Cemetery yields surprises

Search for burials at Star Cemetery yields surprises

Wednesday, 25 January 2006

January 25, 2006

By John Andrew Prime
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Volunteers have started to repair damaged but salvageable markers in Shreveport's historic Star Cemetery. But a search last weekend by a firefighter and his trained cadaver dog has caused some concerns. After more than a half hour searching an area where thousands of bodies are known to be buried, cadaver dog Ranger, a yellow Lab, was a pooped pooch, historian and cartographer Gary Joiner said. But before he called it quits, Ranger found a possible unmarked burial in an unlikely spot -- in a lane used as a road in the graveyard.

Joiner is helping cemetery preservationists survey the 10-acre property between Interstate 20 and Greenwood Road just east of the main U.S. postal facility.

Tuesday, two city employees who regularly work in the cemetery, aided by preservationist Robert Salaam, gently examined the site to see if Ranger was barking up the wrong monument. Salaam used a surface testing rod to probe for caskets or remains while workers Alvin Veal and Gary Brown used shovels to gently remove earth.

About four inches down, they found concrete. To them, there's a prepared road under years of accumulated runoff dirt.

That doesn't mean there isn't a body there. But it tells them that if it is, it isn't a recent burial but likely one from the graveyard's earliest decades.

Joiner said Ranger hit on the spot toward the end of his foray, when his nose wasn't as clear as it was at the start of the search.

"It would be nice to have the dog come out fresh," Salaam said.

Happier news comes from Diane Salaam, president of Star Cemetery Preservation Society, who is overseeing restoration of salvageable markers in their original locations in the cemetery. Several days ago, stonemasons Willie Singer and James Williams, who work for Central Monument Co. in Keithville, repaired seven markers. Diane Salaam inspected their work Tuesday and was impressed.

"You can still read the dates," she said, running a hand over the rough, weathered surface of a repaired obelisk-style marker from a century ago. "We're paying them (Singer and Williams) a stipend, but it's mostly volunteer work. We're not paying them what they're worth."

Veal, whose crews mow Star and who has a familiarity with the cemetery stretching back many years, is impressed with the volunteers' efforts.

"You've done so much," he told Diane Salaam. "This is the first time this has ever been done like this. You haven't been laying down, you've been at it."

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060125/NEWS01/601250340/1002/NEWS

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