National Cemetery work aligns, secures headstones

story by Aric Mitchell
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Under a simple white stone like the others at Fort Smith National Cemetery lay Isaac Parker, the man known by virtually everyone in Fort Smith as “The Hanging Judge.”

Parker was responsible for around 88 hangings from the time following the Civil War to his death in 1896. He’s an icon of Fort Smith history and his court is still a popular tourist attraction. But at 522 Garland Avenue — his final resting place — he is simply a man, who served his country during its frontier days.

Joining Parker at the National Cemetery are more than 11,000 veterans, who fought in some of the nation’s deadliest wars from the Civil War to the present. There are Union soldiers, of which Parker was one. There are Confederate soldiers like Alexander E. Steen, a Mexican War veteran, who defected from the Union. He was disowned by his family before being killed at the battle of Prairie Grove on Dec. 7, 1862.

There is also Brigadier General William O. Darby, a decorated Fort Smith native responsible for creating Darby’s Rangers, a daring group of soldiers patterned after the British Commandos, according to National Cemetery literature. Five days before Germany surrendered to the Allies and moved World War II closer to its end, Darby was killed in Italy. He is buried in Section 9 of the cemetery, just a few headstones away from Parker.

As early as 1819, men in the service of their country were being laid to rest at the facility. Then, it was known simply as the Post Cemetery. Its first inhabitant was the surgeon Thomas Russell, a veteran of the War of 1812. It wasn’t until after the Civil War, in 1867, that the Post Cemetery would be given the designation of a National Cemetery.

As one walks along the rolling greens of the modern day landscape, he will see a plot of disheveled dirt and rectangular concrete columns peeking up from the ground.

Some of the headstones lay flat, not with the same pride and stature of others. In fact, if one didn’t know better, he might think these monuments were casualties to a spate of April storms. But all is intentional, an ambitious project undertaken by the National Cemetery approximately every 10 years. This particular project has been two years in the making and is estimated to cost $2.1 million, Cemetery Director William Haggerty notes.

While there is no estimated completion date — weather setbacks have slowed progress by about one week — Haggerty is hoping the project will be finished by Labor Day.

Jeri Cockram, of Van Buren-based Cockram Concrete Company, is overseeing 8,678 of the headstones in this realignment project. The effort is more than good business. Cockram was approached by Gerald Summerow of Kylee Construction in Kingston, N.C., to bid the project, and it touched her “on a personal level,” she said.

“I have a brother interred in a similar facility in Gaithersburg, Md. The first time I met Gerald at the cemetery, we were walking through the sections and came upon a headstone with Vietnam War, and the dates. It hit me hard and I had to choke back tears, because that is the era in my history for a lot of my contemporaries to have served and died for this country.”

According to Cockram, the process of headstone realignment begins with a survey point at what is called a keystone. The stones are a precise distance from each other in a row, and each row is a precise distance from the next row, giving “that awesome appearance that is characteristic of National Cemeteries worldwide,” Cockram says.

Some of the stones lean forward or backward, or side to side, and some have settled so far into the ground that special messages and credentials are no longer readable under layers of dirt and mud and grass.

The stones are installed at a precise distance from the ground, and according to Cockram, “there is a lot of leveling after the set.” Even stones with no apparent discrepancies are reset with grade-fill base beneath the stone and packed on all four sides in a concrete sleeve so future movement is prevented. Finally, the stones are power washed, and then it is up to the Department of Veteran Affairs to inspect and sign off on the work.

Before breaking ground on the project, Cockram spoke with the crew members about “why we are here,” she said.

“I told them we should never forget what the stones represent and who is interred here. Many people in Fort Smith and Arkansas probably know someone buried at the National Cemetery,” Cockram said of her speech to the workers. “This is the final memory and testimony to people, who did not live their lives in sound-bites and rhetoric, but walked the walk and gave their lives for service to their country. The Crew’s understanding of this shows in their work.”