Search for Old Graves

BY ROSE POST
SALISBURY POST

''Oh, what a great day!''

The Rev. Johnson Asibuo, pastor of Soldiers Memorial AME Zion Church, couldn't hang around the corner of East Liberty and North Church streets all day Tuesday.

But he couldn't leave either.

When Salisbury firemen pulled their trucks into place around the Freedman's Cemetery and raised their highest 110-foot ladder, he needed to be at Rowan Regional Medical Center doing his duties as volunteer pastor.

But on this day, at least at the beginning of this emotional, historic day, he needed to be here, too, on this corner across from his church, watching thermal imaging expert Bob Melia of New Orleans, Miss., climb that ladder and find history.

He needed to marvel that a nationally known thermal imaging expert was here, on that ladder, aiming his special high tech camera at the grassy hillside next to the Old English Cemetery and into the Old English Cemetery itself.

And that the camera would detect heat differences in the ground that would show where slaves and freedmen who had been slaves are buried, revealing the past of people who have had little record of their past.

How could he leave?

He couldn't.

He's chairman of the Freedman's Cemetery Memorial Project Committee.

So he stayed and watched and wiped a tear or two and laughed now and then with sheer pleasure and absolute disbelief as Melia climbed the ladder and peered through the eyepiece of his video-like camera and signalled Sandy Bogle on the ground below to plant an orange or a yellow flag.

A flag could mean an unmarked grave. Or several unmarked graves.

''I am so excited,'' Asibuo said again and again as he watched. ''This is one of the best experts in the country who has come to little Salisbury. Oh, what a blessing! Thank you, Jesus. It means the world to me.''

Melia's work will help the Freedman's Cemetery Memorial Project committee determine the placement of a memorial monument so no graves will be disturbed.

He used his equipment to find bodies in Oklahoma City and Bosnia - and has been asked to use it in Vietnam.

Melia first came to Salisbury last spring to try to pinpoint the size and location of the Salisbury Confederate Prison for the Robert F. Hoke Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. He is a friend of Sandy Bogle, business manager at Rowan Public Library who also is a member of the United Daughters.

For friendship, he also returned to work on the cemetery - and waived his usual $2,500 daily fee. The library is one of the sponsors of the cemetery project.

He arrived Monday and walked the area. Tuesday shortly after 9 a.m. he and Bogle, who became his ''flag assistant,'' began a morning and afternoon of imaging.

Capt. Carlton Butler, who heads the city's largest ladder truck and the rescue unit which is paired with it, and four firemen - T.J. Cook, David Morris, Jay Baker and Chuck Allen - and a full complement of equipment were ready.

But they did find the duty unique.

''We assist people with lights at a ball field,'' the captain said, ''but we've never looked for graves.''

For Melia, it was ''just a typical day.''

He spent it on a ladder looking for anomalies - or differences - in the temperature of the soil.

If you dig a hole in the earth, he explains, and then put the dirt back in, it becomes oxygenated and, in time, compacted, but the density is different, and that difference produces a different ''thermal signature'' or heat pattern.

''It heats up slower in the morning,'' he says, ''and cools down slower at night, and through experience, I've learned to interpret the anomalies to represent different things.''

The flags Sandy Bogle planted represented an area of an anomaly, which could mean one grave or possibly two or three.

And today, they went back to each flag, drew a paint line to show where an anomaly is - ''connected the dots,'' he called it - and computerized the information. And tonight he'll make a preliminary report on the number of graves and their orientation to the project committee.

He's sure people were buried on that grassy hillside, and he detected an established geometrical pattern closest to the stone wall which separates the Old English Cemetery from the Freedman's Cemetery.

He also found unmarked graves inside the Old English Cemetery.

After the planned graves are a couple of multiple graves and then the pattern becomes haphazard.

The multiple graves - he doesn't want to call them mass graves because that implies large numbers - hold no more than 8 or 12 bodies, he believes. One could be a grave for children. All might indicate that ''people were buried in a hurry,'' he said, ''possibly because of disease. And I wouldn't be surprised if they're shallow, no more than four or five feet deep.''

By tonight, he'll know more.

But before all the data is collected and analyzed, he knows he enjoys working here.

''It's good to see a community that wants this done,'' he says.

And he's pleased that he's worked here with the Confederate Prison and the Freedman's Cemetery.

''You can develop deep feelings for a community that wants to work that hard,'' he said. ''It means people are claiming their community or reclaiming their community or learning about their community.''

He likes that.

Before he finally tore himself away for his regular ministerial duties Tuesday morning, Asibuo talked about how deeply he feels about the project.

''It's not just the memorial project,'' he said. ''It's the whole process - that we're beginning to create a black history and an African-American trail and research. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

''When we started, we did not know it would blossom into such a big project.''

Or that he, who came here from Ghana, would feel the kinship he feels with J.E.B. Aggrey, who also came from Ghana, taught at Livingstone Colleg and became Africa's great educator.

Now, he said, watching Melia, ''I can tell my grandchildren that your granddaddy was an African pastor who passed through here and had a part in all these things. ... I am almost in tears. Who would ever think when we started this project that we could have this big help? Thank you, Jesus.''

Chuck Allen, the young black fireman who's also a student at Livingstone College, made sure people walking by didn't step off the sidewalk and onto the area and mess up the images Melia was making.

And he was proud, too.

''I didn't know what I was here for,'' he said, but he found out. ''And I'm really proud of this city and my truck company for being part of it.''