Wayne McCarty remembers playing in the neighborhood cemetery as a youth, when the only way to read names on its decaying gravestones was to make rubbings of them with pencil and paper.
Back then, three decades ago, a half-dozen gravestones stood in the plot a few feet off Tamar Drive at the intersection with High Tor Hill. But today, all that remains are three stones lying flat on the ground, largely buried by overgrowth.
"This is somebody's family cemetery," said McCarty, 45, who grew up in one of the nearby townhouses in the Long Reach neighborhood. "It was part of Columbia before it was Columbia, and it's just disappearing. Everywhere I look now people are forgetting about the past."
A wooden fence used to encircle the gravestones, which were surrounded by apple orchards, but it eventually fell apart and was taken down, he said.
"It was probably a combination of weather and kids that knocked over all the other tombstones," McCarty said. "Unless you were around here about 30 years ago when it was all standing, you would never know it was there."
The problem of crumbling family cemeteries is common across the state, said Gerhardt Kraske, president of the Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites Inc.
In fact, Kraske contends that almost any state "does it better than Maryland." He said all the New England states, along with Oregon, Washington and Tennessee, have had more success in preserving their cemeteries.
"Most people, unfortunately, don't have a sense of history, but sometimes they get awakened," he said. "I see a curiosity in people, but it's been sort of a hands-off curiosity. They come to us like we're a multimillion [dollar] nonprofit that can step in and take care of things. You can tell they're waiting for us to step in."
In other words, his organization hears questions from people like McCarty often. And the first thing they tell those people to do is to determine exactly who owns the property on which the gravestones are located by searching deeds. In Howard County, cemeteries typically are registered on the Howard County tax map, he said.
To help interested residents, the organization has put together a 70-page book, that sells for $10.60, to guide people in the care of a cemetery.
Montgomery County took action about eight years ago and obtained grant money to help document its more than 390 cemeteries, Kraske said.
"In the last 20 years, Montgomery County has changed enormously," he said. "What were once farms are now developments, and if the rest gets plowed over, it's gone."
Howard has not made as much progress, he said.
Statewide, there has been a reluctance to commit resources or support legislation related to cemetery preservation, Kraske said.
"The past is gone, just forget it," Kraske said some lawmakers have told him. "Sometimes it gets a little discouraging."
But sometimes the public gets outraged by the destruction of cemeteries. For instance, back in the early 1990s, residents of Turf Valley Overlook argued that builders should not disturb the former home of St. Mary's Cemetery and predicted that construction of new homes on that site would disturb remains.
Sure enough, in July 1992, a backhoe digging a water and sewer line unearthed several bones, and construction work halted until the matter could be resolved. The developer had bought the land, which at one time contained the cemetery, from the Catholic Archdiocese, Kraske said.
Developers have been criticized for quickness to bulldoze old cemeteries, but in Western Maryland, farmers can be just as cavalier about history, Kraske noted.
"Farmers may throw the stones in the woods and let the cows graze on the land," he said. "It's easier."
That's the kind of thing McCarty doesn't want to see happen on his watch. He admits he has been concerned for a while about his neighborhood's crumbling cemetery but hasn't known quite what to do.
"I've always thought something should be done about it," he said. "But I always sat back and waited for someone else to do something. People are walking and driving past this every day, and they have no idea what's right beside them. I'd like to see it restored or protected."
june.arney@baltsun.com