There is no sign to mark the entrance of Sandfield Cemetery. In fact, there isn’t really an entrance. You’re driving down College Street approaching South Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and off to your left you start to see clumps of headstones, scattered and haphazardly placed in a field. There is no fence, there are no paths. Some of the tombstones have fallen over so long ago that the earth has begun to grow over them. Some are just slabs of concrete, with words painted on them in sloping black letters.
‘I love you. In Loving Memory of N.S. Brooks Gordon. 07-08-1998.’
This cemetery starkly contrasts with Columbus’s oldest cemetery. On Fourth Street South, wrought iron fences and red brick monuments with marble plaques signal the entrance to Friendship Cemetery. The graves are in neat and solemn squares, organized by roads wide enough to drive down and shaded by trees. There are even street signs.
The differences between these two cemeteries run deeper than aesthetics. Although both were founded within 5 years of each other — Friendship in 1849 and Sandfield in 1854 — Friendship is registered on the National Register of Historic Places; Sandfield isn’t. Most of the records of persons buried in Friendship are fairly well preserved; Sandfield’s aren’t.
Perhaps the most significant difference: Friendship was founded for white Columbus residents.
Sandfield wasn’t.
An ordinance in 1854 mandated that African Americans be buried in Sandfield, whether they were slave or free. Even after the war, the cemetery stayed a historically black cemetery.
Eight years ago, Columbus resident Willie Byrd noticed yet another difference between the two cemeteries. On Memorial and Veteran’s Day, the graves of deceased soldiers in Friendship Cemetery were adorned by flags. Sandfield, despite containing the graves of many African American soldiers, was not decorated.
“There weren’t any flags being put on the black soldiers’ graves,” Byrd said. “So I got some flags from the American Legion and I started putting them out myself.”
That first year, Byrd walked through Sandfield Cemetery and Moss Tie Cemetery, another historically black cemetery in Columbus, with a spiral notebook and a pen. He wrote down the name of every veteran and what branch of the military they served in.
It took him four hours, and he found that the 200 flags supplied by the American Legion were not enough to mark all the graves.
“I found out there were 338 veterans buried in those cemeteries,” Byrd said. “So I bought the rest of the flags myself, and now I put them out there every year.”
He still has his notepad from eight years ago with the 338 names in it, but he doesn’t need it anymore. Now he walks through Sandfield Cemetery with familiarity, gesturing to a small grave off to the left. It is already adorned with one of Byrd’s flag. “A WWI veteran is over there.” Then, he points to a building behind the cemetery, within 40 yards of the last row of graves. “That’s a bar,” he says with a grin.
Byrd has five or six family members buried in Sandfield himself. Despite knowing his way around, it still takes around three hours to put out the flags. His wife Whirllie helps him every year.
Willie and Whirllie are not the only ones in Columbus that work to recognize the sacrifices made by soldiers. Other volunteers are organized by Columbus’s branch of the American Legion and these community members also put flags in different cemeteries across the county on Memorial Day.
William Quick has been a member of the Legion for 31 years and has served as Post Commander for the last three. As long as he can remember, the Legion has put flags on the graves of soldiers in Friendship Cemetery, and it was not until around ten years ago that they started expanding.
Quick’s goal now as Commander is to cover every veteran’s grave in the area. However, finding the graves is no easy task.
“A lot of our county veterans in the cemeteries, they don’t have that marker,” Quick said. “So we rely on churches to tell us, ‘hey, nobody is covering our church.’ And then we’ll try to get somebody out there.”
“I’m finding cemeteries where I didn’t know there were cemeteries,” Quick said. “For Sunday, I have nine cases of 144 flags going out. And I still tell people, we don’t cover as many as we miss.”
The tradition of honoring soldiers in Columbus goes back nearly 150 years, to four women putting flowers on the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers in Friendship Cemetery. “There were both Union and Confederate soldiers there on that first Decoration Day,” Quick said. “And when we recognize veterans, we try to recognize any veteran. I don’t care his color, I don’t care his religion. If he was a veteran, he needs to be decorated.”
Quick and Byrd both see the importance in honoring veterans for a personal reason. Both men served in Vietnam.
“One day I’m going to be a fallen soldier,” Byrd said. “And to me it just seemed like they were forgotten. And on Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day I just want to be part of remembering them. That’s why I put the flags out.”
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