Small National Cemeteries Have Their Own Faithful
By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 30, 2005
Kelvin Bennett wakes up about 4 a.m. most mornings and drives nearly two hours from Baltimore to the wrought-iron gates of Quantico National Cemetery in Virginia.
He is a caretaker, and a veteran, though the duties he associates with the titles sometimes blur. He can happily spend an entire day weeding around the headstones, or washing them from gray back to white so such words as "eternally loved" or "Nam" remain clear. He makes sure the garbage cans don't smell, and sometimes, if it's windy out, he chases bouquets blown from graves across the rounded green landscape, which was mostly empty of the living Friday, as Memorial Day weekend began.
"Nobody knows Quantico," said Bennett, 48, cutting the engine of his lawnmower, near Section 5. "But I love it. . . . The way the hills roll up there? It's kind of serene."
While thousands will fan across the lawns of Arlington, the day will be quieter at many of the 136 other national cemeteries across the country, smaller but no less affecting places populated by veterans of war and peacetime, their wives and sometimes their children.
In the Washington area, there is the historic Battleground National Cemetery on Georgia Avenue NW, the smallest one at just an acre, where 40 Union soldiers are buried. Annapolis and Alexandria have two of the original 14 national cemeteries established during the Civil War.
The U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen's Home on Harewood Road NW is an active cemetery, as is Quantico, which was dedicated in 1983 and has three to five burials a day.
"A lot of people, they're just not aware we're here," said George Allen, Quantico's new director, explaining that people often assume that the name refers only to the Marine Corps base.
On many days, the cemetery's 23 employees far outnumber visitors.
Indeed, on Friday afternoon, Lester Tuell was the lone visitor in the small administration building near the entrance. The air conditioner hummed, and he bent over a big book, his finger tracing the page in search of his brother and several other relatives.
"I come two or three times a year," said Tuell, a World War II veteran who lives up the road in Dumfries. "It's laid out pretty nice."
Walter Bieder, 84, was ready at the information desk, in case anyone else came by. A cemetery volunteer and World War II veteran, he was among the first wave of soldiers to land at Omaha Beach in Normandy but decided a while ago that he wanted to be buried at Quantico instead of Arlington, even if it's not as famous.
"To me, Arlington's too commercial," said Bieder, whose wife is buried at Quantico. "I may be all wet, but here it's nice and quiet. . . . To me, this is more peaceful."
The cemetery is 725 acres in all, with tailored green hills and curves bordered by swaths of full-grown trees. There were perhaps three visitors out among the ordered white headstones Friday -- two women watering flowers here, a man with a crew cut kneeling there -- and the dozen or so caretakers, mowing and trimming and getting the grounds ready for today's ceremony.
Most of the caretakers are veterans and consider the people buried there family.
Larry Brown, a Vietnam veteran who rides to work with Bennett from Baltimore, said that to him, tomorrow and Wednesday will be very much like today, minus the crowds.
"I look at the headstones all the time," he said, stopping a minute by the one for Pfc. Douglas Eugene Pleasant, who served in Vietnam and died June 29.
"I look at the names and ages. You just kind of think of them."
Up the hill, David Arrant, also a Vietnam veteran, said he has friends in Sections 5, 17, 9 and 23, "and one right up here in section 20," he said, pointing. "I take special care of them."
Bennett, who has been working at Quantico four years, said sometimes family members will come up and say thank you, which is nice, since he takes a lot of pride in his work. He said he has gotten to know the regulars, people who visit every day, such as the widow who lost her husband, a veteran, on Sept. 11, 2001.
"She drives here every day," he said. "She'll read a novel a while, and then she'll leave. . . . You get a kind of relationship with people because you see them every day."
There are large funerals sometimes, but the caretakers usually watch from a distance. Afterward, they are responsible for carrying the coffin to its designated plot and lowering it into the ground.
By then, family and guests have gone, and as it is most of the time, it's just the caretakers in their green uniforms, alone with the men and women that Memorial Day was established to honor.
It might not be a ceremony worthy of Arlington, but Arrant will offer a final salute, even if no one is there to see, and Bennett will say a few words, even if no one is there to hear.
"I'll say, 'Bless them, and bless their family,' " he said, " 'and God let them rest in peace.' "
