Workers reclaim ruined cemetery

Thanks to help from the Albany Diocese, a place of the dead is coming back to life.

Two months ago, St. Paul's Church in Pass Christian, Mississippi, was among the places hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. Not only were the church and school destroyed, but the parish cemetery was submerged under 28 feet of water.

When the waters receded, six houses had been deposited by Katrina on the cemetery grounds, along with tons of debris.

Help from north

The Catholic Cemetery Conference, based in Des Plaines, Illinois, spearheaded an effort to restore cemeteries damaged by the hurricane. Bishop Thomas Rodi of the Diocese of Biloxi, contacted the group to ask for help in getting St. Paul's cemetery, which had been established in 1847, restored. Coincidentally, the Albany Diocese was founded in the same year.

Richard Touchette, director of the Albany Diocesan Cemeteries Office, and three others -- Andrew Linehan, Cemeteries manager; Luke McGarry, assistant manager; and Bob Barrows, foreman -- traveled to Pass Christian to restore the five-acre burial ground.

"I wasn't really prepared for what I saw," Mr. Touchette told The Evangelist. "It's almost as if the entire city of Pass Christian doesn't exist anymore. There is just rubble where there used to be neighborhoods and debris where there used to be houses.

"We brought one pickup truck and one dump truck, and towed a small backhoe. We also brought chain saws, shovels, rakes, pry bars and anything else we thought might be of use. The storm left the grounds near complete devastation. It would be impossible to have burials there in that condition."

Familiar territory

Mr. Touchette, who worked for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston before coming to Albany, had 11 years of experience in hurricane recovery efforts.

"You would not believe the level of destruction there," he said.

"There is complete devastation from the coast, going inland for 40 miles. I spent three years in Africa; I've been in war zones. Nothing I saw in those places could compare to this. It was the worst I have ever seen in my life."

Volunteers from cemeteries offices in Rockford, Ill., and Newark, N.J., also pitched in to help with the cleanup.

Houses out

Step one for the group was to dismantle the houses that had been dumped in the cemetery. Because two of them were right on top of gravesites, they had to be dismantled by hand. The others were taken down with heavy equipment.

"We didn't want to damage those gravesites," Mr. Touchette said, describing the delicacy of their efforts. "It was labor-intensive work, but we wanted to be respectful of the sacred ground, and we were motivated by our reverence for a proper resting place for the dead.

"Most of the monuments had been knocked over by the storm. We were able to restore them. In addition, we removed all the debris, including toppled trees and limbs. We also raked the entire cemetery by hand, picking up all the smaller debris that the backhoes didn't get."

Job well done

When the Albany team left the cemetery and headed home earlier this month, most of the cemetery had been restored. A volunteer group from Chicago is now finishing the work.

"All that's left to do now is to finish removing those last two houses and giving the lawns a good mowing. Everything else has been cleaned up," Mr. Touchette noted, adding that burials can resume.

He will likely return to Pass Christian to assess the work and determine if anything further needs to be done.

Restoration

On All Soul's Day, Nov. 2, while they were finishing up, Mr. Touchette said, people came to place flowers on gravesites.

"The cemetery really is the only place there now that resembles anything at all," he said. "Most of that entire community was destroyed. People still don't have running water, electricity or telephone service, which they estimate will take until January to restore. The entire infrastructure will have to be rebuilt. There is still only rubble and debris. It's going to take a long time.

"Hopefully, we have given the community a place for people to find some peace, even if it is only for a short time."

(11/10/05) [[In-content Ad]]