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St. Mary's Loses to Purdue
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) Purdue made it through its NCAA opener again, but Saint Mary's made it interesting.
Lewis Jackson made the go-ahead free throws with 22.8 seconds left after the Gaels had rallied from 11 points down late to take their first lead, and the Boilermakers won 72-69 in the Midwest Regional on Friday night.
Jorden Page hit a 3-pointer with 44.2 seconds left to finish a 14-2 run that brought the Gaels back from a 66-55 deficit with 4:24 to play.
Purdue's Terone Johnson and Saint Mary's Clint Steindl were called for traveling before Jackson made his free throws. Page badly missed what would have been a go-ahead 3 with 10 seconds left, and Robbie Hummel made two free throws for a three-point lead.
Sponsored By
Rob Jones, who had 17 of his 23 points in the second half, missed a 3 at the buzzer for the seventh-seeded Gaels (27-6).
Purdue won its NCAA tournament opener for the 14th straight time. The Gaels were back in the tournament for the first time since their surprising run to the round of 16 in 2010.
Johnson had 21 points for the 10th-seeded Boilermakers (22-12). Jackson scored 15 of his 18 in the second half and Hummel and Anthony Johnson finished with 10 apiece.
Purdue turned back the Gaels repeatedly in the second half before the West Coast Conference champions made one last push.
Matthew Dellavedova's three-point play got the Gaels within 66-58 with 4 minutes to play.
After Dellavedova took a charge from D.J. Byrd, he drove the length of the floor for a layup. Hummel missed at the other end, and Jones hit a jumper to make it a four-point game with 2:41 left.
Terone Johnson badly missed a free throw, and Jones hit a baseline jumper.
Jackson's drive to the hoop put Purdue back up 68-64 with 1:37 left. Dellavedova made a couple of free throws to pull the Gaels within two. After Hummel missed a 3, Page took a pass from Dellavedova for his only 3 of the night and a 69-68 Saint Mary's lead.
Hummel, back in the tournament after missing the past two Purdue appearances because of ACL tears in his right knee, didn't seem to miss a beat on the big stage. He hit an early 3, swapped some skin with Ryne Smith on the way back to play defense, and later got a friendly bounce from the rim on a baseline jumper.
But Terone Johnson, starting his eighth straight game after beginning the season on the bench, carried the Boilermakers in the first half. He shot 6 of 8 and had 15 points, almost double his season average.
He scored seven points in an 8-0 Purdue run, finishing the spurt with a layup after Byrd rebounded Jackson's missed free throw for a 27-16 lead.
Saint Mary's struggled for the first 20 minutes, shooting just 31 percent and missing all but one of their 15 3-point attempts. The Gaels finished at 42 percent and went 4 of 25 on 3s.
Sponsored By
The atmosphere at CenturyLink Center was subdued early, with the crowd drained from No. 15 seed Norfolk State's 86-84 upset of Missouri in the previous game.
During the first media timeout a group of Norfolk State players walked into arena, some still in game jerseys, and got a big cheer as they lifted their hands to raise the roof.


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Peabody earns A-Sun Track Athlete of the Week
MACON, Ga. – Lipscomb track and field athlete Tucker Peabody has been named the Atlantic Sun Conference Track Athlete of the Week after setting two school records at the Sun Angel Classic last weekend in Tempe, Ariz.
Peabody, a native of Memphis, Tenn., crossed the finish line in an Atlantic Sun-best 21.13 seconds in the 200-meter dash. Peabody finished fifth overall but was the second collegiate runner to cross the finish line in the premiere event.
Peabody also finished in third place in the 100-meter dash in 10.5 seconds. That time ranks him second in the A-Sun this season.
The Bisons are back in action on Saturday at the Boston Moon Classic in Nashville and at the Ole Miss Invite in Oxford, Miss.

subset: commoncrawl


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Skyline math scholars made their presence known at the 34th annual Fort Hays State Math Relays on Nov 8.
The event was open to students enrolled in a state accredited high school and classified as ninth through 12th graders. There were 700 students participating from all over the state. Skyline Schools sent 15 students to the event. Their already learned skills guided them throughout the event.
"We didn't have time to get together and practice," Lee said. "I just got together with the freshman to go over the rules."
Once in Hays the students were enrolled in team competitions, single competitions or in both. The team participation part was modeled along the lines of track relays. Each student worked for seven minutes and then it was passed down to the next person.
"Being under a time crunch didn't affect my math performance, it actually helped me perform my best," junior Abby Giles said.
The students spent the entire morning testing and were scored against all students in Class 6-1A. Once the points were totaled, they were compared to other Class 3-2A schools.
While the tests were being scored the students relaxed their minds. Lee took her students out to eat at a nearby restaurant.
"I enjoyed competing, but I was glad to give my brain a break," freshman Colin Kumberg said.
The results were posted throughout the day. Skyline students who competed in team events placed first place in five events and three individual students placed first. Once the students were back at the university they were handed a packet with all the awards they won.
Overall the Skyline scholars managed to place second, regardless of their lack of study time. The students managed to double their points from previous years.
Sophomore Blake Lee said they were overwhelmed with excitement because they managed to beat high schools that were way bigger than Skyline.
"The students made me proud since they didn't have time to prepare," Lee said. "It showed me that they do pay attention to detail, and goes to show they are well rounded students."
Math Relays - 2012
Skyline Team – 2nd Place in 2A/3A
Using Number Sense:
12th Gr. Team: (Brandon, Morgan, Madison M.) – 1st
12th Grade: Madison Moore - 3rd
12th Grade: Brandon Baird - 10th
12th Grade Team: (Shannon, Morgan, Janessa) – 1st
Algebraic Manipulations:
9th Grade: Betsy Giles – 1st
9th Grade: Colin Kumberg – 12th
10th Grade Team: (Austin, Madison G., Kasey) - 8th
10th Grade: Blake Lee – 6th
12th Grade: Madison – 6th
Informal Geometry and Measurement:
9th Grade Team: (Betsy, Kasey, Colin) - 5th
12th Grade: Brandon Baird - 4th
Applications of Algebra and Arithmetic:
9th Grade: Kasey Gilpin – 10th
10th Grade Team: (Austin, Blake, Madison G.) – 3rd
12th Gr. Team: (Brandon, Morgan, Madison M.) – 6th
Calculations with Calculators:
9th Grade: Betsy Giles – 5th
9th Grade Team: (Kasey, Briana, Colin) - 8th
10th Grade: Blake Lee – 1st
11th Grade Team: (Janessa, Taylor, Abby) – 10th
12th Grade: Madison Moore – 1st
12th Grade: Brandon Baird - 3rd
12th Grade: Morgan Flowers - 6th
Tony Marquez is a senior at Skyline School.


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10 Creative Ways To Decorate Easter Eggs
Have you decorated any eggs for Easter yet? You can dye them naturally or paint them with watercolors, but if you're looking for something a little out of the ordinary, look to these clever, modern takes. (How cute are those fruity eggs?)
1. Fabric Covered Eggs - Better Homes & Gardens
2. Silk Dyed Easter Eggs - $12 kit from BooBahBlue
3. Neon Dip-Dyed Eggs - Oh Joy
4. DIY Washi Tape Easter Eggs - Lovely Indeed
5. Easter Egg Sculptures - Mr Printables
6. Hand-Drawn Easter Eggs - Confetti Sunshine
7. DIY Fruity French Easter Eggs - The Alison Show
8. Golden Marbled Easter Eggs - She Knows
9. Modern Easter Eggs - See Jane Blog
10. Black and White Easter Eggs - Obviously Sweet
Related: 6 Resources for Making Fun and Colorful Naturally-Dyed Easter Eggs
(Images: as linked)


text:
First of all, I love the expansion of the components, Data, and Events over all the versions I have seen.
It is great to be able to get an app 90% done within Designer.
That said, I think the additional features for the UI (Categories and Toolbar) are a little annoying.
I like to have the screen space to expand the Inspector and still see the full app (ex: iPad).
Maybe if these features were collapsible so you could hide just the categories and toolbar, but leave the Toolbox open with the current category list?
How about a slimmer Toolbox with Categories in a drop down (select field) under the Filters (i love the filters too, by the way!)
The Toolbar (with the ginormous icons) could just go away IMHO.
Under Actions you could have an on/off switch for both Toolbox Categories and Toolbar.
Last, but not least...
I would like to be able to drag from toolbox to Inspector while in code view, I have run into this a few times while setting up stores, fields, and such.
Hope this is helpful, thanks.


text:
Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers' host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!
Scones are something my Grandma is famous for, she used to bake them all the time for us which we'd enjoy warm with jam & cream :) Yummy! I decided to go a bit experimental and try a white chocolate, cranberry and maple scone instead of the traditional plain scone. They smelt amazing cooking in the oven & tasted amazing fresh out of the oven!(Unfortunately they dont look quite so amazing haha). They were nice and puffed and moist which i was very happy with for my first attempt at scones :) Thanks Audax!


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Style # 209662
Sheer lace back detail and super soft fabric make this bebe bodysuit a seriously sexy way to update your top collection. Try it with a leather circle skirt and a pair of heels for a quick after-dark look.
- 92% nylon, 8% spandex
- Center back to hem: 26" (66 cm)
- Lightweight
- Made in USA with imported materials
- Model is 5'9" and is wearing a US size S
Rated 0 out of 5
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Indicative Rate * AU$26 to AU$115
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Why choose Gandi for your hosting service?
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Hampshire County, West Virginia Genealogy
|Hampshire County, West Virginia
Location in the state of West Virginia
Location of West Virginia in the U.S.
|County Seat
United States West Virginia Hampshire County
- 1 County Courthouse
- 2 History
- 3 Places / Localities
- 4 Resources
- 4.1 Research Guides
- 4.2 African American
- 4.3 Cemeteries
- 4.4 Census
- 4.5 Church
- 4.6 Court
- 4.7 Genealogy
- 4.8 Land
- 4.9 Local Histories
- 4.10 Maps
- 4.11 Migration
- 4.12 Military
- 4.13 Naturalization
- 4.14 Newspapers
- 4.15 Probate
- 4.16 Taxation
- 4.17 Vital Records
- 5 Societies and Libraries
- 6 Web Sites
- 7 References
County Courthouse
Hampshire County Courthouse
Main Street
Romney, WV 26757-1696
Phone: 304-822-5112
County Clerk has birth, marriage, death records from 1865
Probate from 1780
Court Records from 1831 and Land Records[1]
Parent County
1753--Hampshire County was created 13 December 1753 from Frederick and Augusta Counties (Virginia).
County seat: Romney[2]
Boundary Changes
See an interactive map of Hampshire County boundary changes.
Record Loss
- Lost court orders and minute books 1753-1787
Places / Localities
Populated Places
Neighboring Counties
Research Guides
- Good, Rebecca H. and Rebecca A. Ebert. Finding Your People in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1998. 4th ed. FHL Book 975 D27e 1998
African American
- Heinegg, Paul. "Hampshire County Personal Property Tax List, 1782-1814," Free African Americans.com. [Heinegg abstracted free blacks listed in these records.]
For tips on accessing Hampshire County, West Virginia Genealogy census records online, see: West Virginia Census.
1782 Enumeration
- Hampshire County Heads of Families - 1782 at U.S. Census Bureau - free. County begins on page 24.
1784 Enumeration
- Hampshire County Heads of Families - 1784 at U.S. Census Bureau - free. County begins on page 69.
Join us in indexing the 1940 Census
Early Baptist churches (with years constituted):
The 10,000 name petition (dated 16 October 1776) has been digitized at the Library of Congress website. It was signed by people from all over Virginia who wanted an end to persecution of Baptists by the Established Church. Baptists and Baptist sympathizers alike signed the petition. To find your ancestor in this record, first check Hall's transcription in the Magazine of Virginia Genealogy (Vols. 35-38, with annotations in Vol. 39), which is available online at Ancestry ($). It is also available in book form at the Family History Library: FHL Book 975.5 B2vs v. 35-39. Then proceed to the Library of Congress website to see the original images.
Hampshire County fell within the bounds of the Ketocton Association.
Early monthly meetings (with years of existence):
- Bear Garden Monthly Meeting (1767-1809)[4]
- Dillon's Run Monthly Meeting (1795-1822) aka Great Cacapon[4]
- Howard's Lick Monthly Meeting, Petersburg, W.Va. (1750-1767) aka North Fork[4]. This area is currently located in Grant County.
- Little Cacapon Monthly Meeting (1748-1755)[4]
- Horton, Vicki Bidinger. Hampshire County, Virginia: Minute Book Abstracts. Green Spring, WV: V.B. Horton, 1993-1994. Volume 1: 1788-1802 and Volume 2: 1817-1823 are available at FHL. Digital versions are available at World Vital Records ($) Volume 1 and Volume 2.
It is anticipated that this bibliography will eventually identify all known family histories published about residents of this county. Use this list to:
- Locate publications about direct ancestors
- Find the most updated accounts of an ancestor's family
- Identify publications, to quote Elizabeth Shown Mills, about an ancestor's "FAN Club" [Friends, Associates, and Neighbors]
- Cartmell, T. K. Shenandoah Valley Pioneers and Their Descendants: A History of Frederick County, Virginia (Illustrated) from Its Formation in 1738 to 1908, Compiled Mainly from Original Records of Old Frederick County, Now Hampshire, Berkeley, Shenandoah, Jefferson, Hardy, Clarke, Warren, Morgan and Frederick. c1909. FHL Book 975.59 H2c 1963; FHL Film 1000634 Item 1; digital versions at Ancestry ($); Family History Archives and World Vital Records ($). [3 copies at FHL.]
- O'Dell, Cecil. Pioneers of Old Frederick County, Virginia. Marceline, Mo.: Walsworth Pub. Co., 1995. FHL Collection. One of the most impressively researched one-place studies in the United States. In a review, Dorman stated "Comprehensive studies such as this appear only rarely. This volume should be in every Virginia genealogical collection."[5]
- [Arnold] Rutherford, Dolores Crumrine. Abstracts of Virginia Families: Vol. 1. MSS. Microfilmed 1990: FHL Film 1597677 Item 12
- [Bowell] Bowell, Lillian and William Bowell. A Bowell Family History. St. Paul, Minn.
- [Brown] Bell, Raymond Martin. The Ancestry of Richard Milhouse Nixon. 3rd ed. Washington, Pa., 1971. FHL Book 929.273 N654b.
- [Camby] Morriso, Patricia Hewitt. From the Potomac to the Columbia; The Camby or Cambe Family. Yorba Linda, Calif., 1994. FHL Book 929.273 C144m.
- [Coberly] Arthaud, John Bradley. "Dr. James Stell Coberly 18th Century Migrant from New Jersey to Virginia and Revolutionary Patriot," The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr.-Jun. 1982):112-117; Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jul.-Sep. 1982):183-189. Digital version at American Ancestors ($). FHL Book 975.5 B2vg v. 26 (1982).
- [Coberly] Harter, Mary. "James Cunningham of Western Virginia," The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan.-Mar. 1985):9-16; Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr.-Jun. 1985):109-116. Digital version at American Ancestors ($). FHL Book 975.5 B2vg v. 29 (1985).
- [Collins] Cresap, Joseph Ord and Bernarr Cresap. The History of the Cresaps. Revised edition. Gallatin, Tenn.: Cresap Society, 1987. FHL Book 929.273 C863c 1987.
- [Cresap] Cresap, J. Ord et al. The History of the Cresaps. McComb, Miss.: The Cresap Society, 1937. FHL Film 897292 Item 1.
- [Cresap] Cresap, Joseph Ord and Bernarr Cresap. The History of the Cresaps. Revised edition. Gallatin, Tenn.: Cresap Society, 1987. FHL Book 929.273 C863c 1987.
- [Enoch] Keith, Arthur L. "The Enoch (Enochs) Family," Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 4 (1923):442-445. Reprinted in Genealogies of Virginia Families from Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine. Volume I: Albidgton-Gerlache. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1981. Free Name Search[6]; publisher's bookstore: Genealogical.com; FHL Book 975.5 D2gvf v. 1.
- [Enochson] The American Genealogist, Vol. 37:104-110; Vol. 37, 219-228. FHL 973 D25aga v. 37
- [Enochson] McCracken, George E. "Enochsons of Virginia and Pennsylvania," The American Genealogist, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct. 1970):255. FHL 973 D25aga v. 46
- [Lewis] Long, Daniel Reid. John Lewis "The Lost Pioneer", His Ancestors and Descendents (1670-1970). Baltimore, Md.: D.R. Long, 1971. FHL Book 929.273 L585Lo
- [Locke] Tiller, Linda Locke, Ardith H. Johnson, Jeanne R. Stanis, and Stella Locke. "Locke Families of Southwest Virginia," The Southwest Virginian, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1978):25-33. FHL Book 975.57 D25s v. 1 (1978).
- [Means] Newton, John Lee. The Means Family of Paris, Edgar County, Illinois: This is a Year 2002 Update of the 1972 "The Means Family of America";, Chapter 2, Edited by Elizabeth Cissel Foglesong. Dallas, Texas: J.L. Newton, 2002. FHL Book 929.273 M462n.
- [Pierpoint] Stickney, A.B. "The American Ancestry of John Pierpoint of (West) Virginia," The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Apr.-Jun. 1958):51-61. Digital version at American Ancestors ($).
- [Post] Poinsett, Doris Jean Post. Valentin Pfost/Post, 1740-1800, of Hardy County (West) Virginia and Some of His Descendants. Baltimore, Md.: Gateway Press, 1989. Digital version at Family History Archives; FHL Book 929.273 P845p.
- [Pursell] Winchester, Warren. "Thomas Pursell of New York New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware: Early Descendants in Maryland, Virginia (now West Virginia), and Kentucky," The American Genealogist, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Apr. 2006):110-120. FHL 973 D25aga v. 81
- [Renick] Renick, E.I. "The Renick Family of Virginia," Publications of the Southern History Association, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jul. 1899): 221-227. Digitized by Internet Archive - free.
- [Ross] Jobson, Robert C. "The Ross Family of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky," The Kentucky Genealogist, Vol. 25, No. 2 (April/June 1983):69-71. FHL Book 976.9 B2kg v. 25 (1983).
- [Timmons] Corum, Frank. Captain George Timmons, Fact and Fiction. Hanson, Ky., 1990. FHL Book 929.273 T484c.
Grants and Patents
- Gray, Gertrude E. Virginia Northern Neck Land Grants, 1742-1775. Vol. II. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1997. FHL; digital version at Ancestry ($). [Includes Hampshire County.]
- Gray, Gertrude E. Virginia Northern Neck Land Grants, 1775-1800. Vol. III. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1993. FHL; digital version at Ancestry ($). [Includes Hampshire County.]
Local Histories
- Cartmell, T. K. Shenandoah Valley Pioneers and Their Descendants: A History of Frederick County, Virginia (Illustrated) from Its Formation in 1738 to 1908, Compiled Mainly from Original Records of Old Frederick County, Now Hampshire, Berkeley, Shenandoah, Jefferson, Hardy, Clarke, Warren, Morgan and Frederick. c1909. Digital version at Ancestry ($); Family History Archives and World Vital Records ($). FHL US/CAN Book 975.59 H2c 1963; FHL US/CAN Film 1000634 Item 1.
Map of 1850 Virginia and West Virginia
- Clay, Robert Y. "Some Delinquent Taxpayers 1787-1790," The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1977):287-292. FHL Book 975.5 B2vg; digital version at American Ancestors ($). [These records often identify migrants who left the county and their intended destinations. Hampshire County's 1786 Delinquent List appears on p. 289.]
French and Indian War
- Bockstruck, Lloyd DeWitt. Virginia's Colonial Soldiers. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1988. FHL Book 975.5 M2bL. [Identifies some Westmoreland County militia officers, soldier enlistments, and veterans; see place name index.]
- Boogher, William F. Gleanings of Virginia History: An Historical and Genealogical Collection, Largely from Original Sources. Washington, D.C.: n.p., 1903. Digital version at Google Books; 1965 reprint: FHL Book 975.5 H2bw 1965. [Includes a chapter titled "Legislative Enactments connecting the preceding historic sketch [French and Indian War, Lord Dunmore's War] with the adjudication of the resulting accounts that follow; with the list of officers, soldiers and civilians entitled to compensation for military and other services rendered." For Hampshire County, see pp. 85-86.]
Revolutionary War
Regiments. Service men in Hampshire County served in various regiments. Men often joined a company (within a regiment) that originated in their county. Hampshire County supplied soldiers for the:
- - 8th Virginia Regiment
- - 12th Virginia Regiment (2nd and 3rd Companies)[7]
Additional resources:
Hampshire residents recommended for military commissions during the Revolutionary War.[8]
- A Census of Pensioners for Revolutionary or Military Services: With their Names, Ages, and Places of Residence, as Returned by the Marshalls of the Several Judicial Districts, Under the Act for Taking the Sixth Census]. 1841. Digital versions at U.S. Census Bureau and Google Books et. al. 1967 reprint: FHL Book 973 X2pc 1840. [See Virginia, Western District, Hampshire County on page 134.]
- Rejected or Suspended Applications for Revolutionary War Pensions. Washington, D.C., 1852. Reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1969, and 1991. Reprints include "an Added Index to States." Digital version at Ancestry ($); FHL Book 973 M24ur. [Includes veterans from this county; Virginia section begins on page 238.]
- West Virginia, Civil War Service Records of Union Soldiers, 1861-1865
War of 1812
Hampshire County men served in the 77th and 114th Regiments.[9]
Civil War
Regiments. Service men in Hampshire County, West Virginia Genealogy served in various regiments. Men often joined a company (within a regiment) that originated in their county. Listed below are companies that were specifically formed in Hampshire County, West Virginia Genealogy:
- - 7th Regiment, Virginia Cavalry (Ashby's) (Confederate). Company F (Hampshire Riflemen aka New Creek Riflemen).[10]
- - 11th Regiment, Virginia Cavalry. Company D.[11]
- - 13th Regiment, Virginia Infantry (Confederate). Company I (The Frontier Rifles) and Company K (The Hampshire Guard).[12]
- - 18th Regiment, Virginia Cavalry (Confederate). Companies B, C, F, I, and K.[13]
- - 23rd Regiment, Virginia Cavalry (Confederate). Company E.[14]
Hampshire County, West Virginia Wills 1809-1969
West Virginia Will Books
How can Virginia tax lists help me?
- [1782-1814] Heinegg, Paul. "Hampshire County Personal Property Tax List, 1782-1814," Free African Americans.com. [Heinegg abstracted free blacks listed in these records.]
- [1786] Clay, Robert Y. "Some Delinquent Taxpayers 1787-1790," The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1977):287-292. Digital version at American Ancestors ($); FHL Book 975.5 B2vg. [These records often identify migrants who left the county and their intended destinations. Hampshire County's 1786 Delinquent List appears on p. 289.]
- [1787] Schreiner-Yantis, Netti and Florene Speakman Love. The 1787 Census of Virginia: An Accounting of the Name of Every White Male Tithable Over 21 Years, the Number of White Males Between 16 & 21 Years, the Number of Slaves over 16 & Those Under 16 Years, Together with a Listing of Their Horses, Cattle & Carriages, and Also the Names of All Persons to Whom Ordinary Licenses and Physician's Licenses Were Issued. 3 vols. Springfield, Va.: Genealogical Books in Print, 1987. FHL Book 975.5 R4sn v. 1. [The source of this publication is the 1787 personal property tax list. Hampshire County is included in Vol. 1.]
- [1800-1814] Horton, Vicki Bidinger. Hampshire County, Virginia (WV) Personal Property Tax Lists, 1800-1814. Romney, W. Va.: Hampshire Review, 1995. FHL Book 975.495 R28ho.
- [1815] Ward, Roger D. 1815 Directory of Virginia Landowners (and Gazetteer). 6 vols. Athens, Ga.: Iberian Pub. Co., 1997-2000. FHL Book 975 E4w v. 6. [The source for this publication is the 1815 land tax. Hampshire County is included in Vol. 6.]
Vital Records
West Virginia Vital Records: Birth, Death, Marriages
Societies and Libraries
Family History Centers
Web Sites
Learning How toEdit our Wiki Sites
Hampshire County, West Virginia Microfilms at the Library of Virginia
|Genealogy courses: Learn how to research from an expert in Fun Five Minute Genealogy Videos.
- ↑ Handybook for Genealogists: United States of America, 10th ed. (Draper, Utah: Everton Pub., 2002), Hampshire County, West Virginia. Page 743 At various libraries (WorldCat); FHL Book 973 D27e 2002.
- ↑ The Handybook for Genealogists: United States of America, 10th ed. (Draper, UT:Everton Publishers, 2002).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Robert Baylor Semple and George William Beale, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia (1810; reprint, Richmond, Va.: Pitt and Dickinson, 1894), 386-387. Digital version at Google Books.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Jay Worrall, The Friendly Virginians: America's First Quakers (Athens, Ga.: Iberian Publishing Company, 1994), 537-539. FHL Book 975.5 K2wj.
- ↑ John Frederick Dorman, "Review of Pioneers of Old Frederick County, Virginia," in The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Jul.-Sep. 1995):236.
- ↑ Name Search at Genealogical.com is a comprehensive name index to 638 books and CDs published or reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Company (now Genealogical.com). For a complete list of the works included, see Publications in Name Search at Genealogical.com
- ↑ E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra, A Guide to Virginia Military Organizations in the American Revolution, 1774-1787 (Richmond, Va.: Virginia State Library, 1978), 67-68. FHL Book 975.5 M2s.
- ↑ J.T. McAllister, Virginia Militia in the Revolutionary War: McAllister's Data (Hot Springs, Va.: McAllister Pub. Co., 1913), 34. Digitized by Internet Archive.
- ↑ Stuart Lee Butler, A Guide to Virginia Militia Units in the War of 1812 (Athens, Ga.: Iberian Pub. Co., 1988), 100. FHL Book 975.5 M2bs.
- ↑ Richard L. Armstrong, 7th Virginia Cavalry (Lynchburg, Va.: H.E. Howard, 1992). FHL Book 975.5 M2vr v. 88.
- ↑ Richard L. Armstrong, 11th Virginia Cavalry (Lynchburg, Va.: H.E. Howard, c1989). FHL Book 975.5 M2vr v. 52.
- ↑ David F. Riggs, 13th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, Va.: H.E. Howard, 1988). FHL Book 975.5 M2vr v. 49.
- ↑ Roger U. Delauter, 18th Virginia Cavalry (Lynchburg, Va.: H.E. Howard, 1985). FHL Book 975.5 M2vr v. 18.
- ↑ Richard B. Kleese, 23rd Virginia Cavalry (Lynchburg, Va.: H.E. Howard, 1995). FHL Book 975.5 M2vr v. 118.


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All Comments (34)
Wow, I love this girl. She's a natural fucking machine. I've got a confession to make. Since I discovered Thai nightlife, I need to visit Pattaya again and again. Yess, I fuck whores and bargirls. Paying for sex made my life complete. I've got an urge to fuck as much sweet young Pattaya girls as possible. Thai pussy needs white man's cum. I just need to give it to them over and over again.
What he means is the only sex he's getting from his hands. But dream on. Hell dreams are free.
cumming inside means true love!!! shes a nice fuck...
she almost choked on his dick. he pushed it too far down her throat. next time flush the toilet...thats nasty
toilet is flushed..thats pattaya yellow water for you !!lol
Next time just show the toilet
Most of these women - this one included - are post operative gender reassigned transexuals. Not a big deal, but people don't seem to acknowledge the fact.
most of the girl doesnt look like they were allready 18. what the fuck?!
That cock grabber is female. Nice piss flaps, clitoral hood and clit. Not store bought.
I would lick all the sperm on her pussy
it is a woman u can tell by body shape
Sie ist ein braves mädchen , wünschte ich wäre es an seiner stelle gewesen...! scheint richtig gut getan zu haben in ihr zu kommen
I have to agree with the inseminator. I've been paying for sex and fucking escort girls. If I had the money I would have my cock up a soft wet cunt every night of the week.
LOL @ Bob
where does she work?
This man so well cum in her pussy. This is so hot. I love Asiatiche.
with over 30 000 girls in pattaya alone...when a girl doesn't obey,,she.s out the frekkin door !! NEXT !!!
Load should have been all over her pretty face
What a Honk
in Thailand u guy can change girl to the boy or boy to the girl..both are possible. if you are young enought than this chages is really not easy to know/see from ppl...
No penis to be found.. so how can it be a ladyboy?
I live in pataya thailand and that not a woman lol
that's her job ... she could at least pretend she's enjoying, and please him properly.
Her getting fucked while standing up was awesome and hot as hell!!
This guy has been doing porn for at least a few years, but with ladyboys. His trademark "oh yeah, yeah yeah" hear it in the very beginning in the background. Anyway he's been bangin ladyboys bareback for years. Search Perfect Ladyboy and you will hear and sometimes see him.
the unflushed urine in the toilet is a really DIRTY and WEIRD touch
the unflushed urine in the toilet is a really nice touch.
seems forced...turned ON completely
seems forced...turned off completely
Been to Thailand and I cant believe this guy fucks bareback. He's got a deathwish! Flush the fucking toilet!
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News as of October 26th:
On monday, with the start of the Ubuntu 13.04 Developer Summit, Valve will begin a special UDS Linux Beta with Team Fortress 2, Portal and Serious Sam 3. It is expected that attendees will gain access to the special Steam for Linux Beta.
Also, Valve has created a new, official Steam Community group for Steam for Linux and gave it the name "Linux Beta Access". It is rumoured that they will pick out from the pool of people that joined this group to get you into the Closed Beta. You should join as soon as possible with your Steam account: http://steamcommunity.com/games/221410
Also don't forget Valve's talk at Canonical's event next week.


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Student Art Graces Magazine Coverby Steve Charles • May 13, 2014 Share:
Underwater photography by Kelly Sullivan '15 graces the cover and opening pages of the current print and online issues of Wabash Magazine, the journal of Wabash College. The magazine regularly features student writing and art in its pages, but Sullivan's photographs on the cover and first four pages mark the first time student work has led the publication since 2005, when the extraordinary photographs by Darin Graber '05 of an immersion course experience in New York City were featured.
"For me, macro photography is like meditation," wrote Sullivan, who earned his first scuba certification when he was 10 years old and publishes his photographs online at 500px.com. His reflections on diving off Little Cayman Island are also published in "Flying Over the Edge of Oblivion," an essay in the magazine's Voices section.
"Kelly brings a unique eye to photography," said Director of Communications and Marketing Kim Johnson, who also serves as the magazine's photo editor and selected many of the images published. It was Johnson who first saw Sullivan's work online and brought it to the attention of the WM staff. "Few people take the time to explore and find different angles or perspectives like Kelly does, and it was a world we wanted our readers to experience for themselves."
"Sullivan's work presented so many possibilities for cover art," WM Art Director Cathy Swick said. "But one in particular offered the opportunity to do a front-to-back wraparound cover, a concept we hadn't tried. And the Wabash logo could be placed in such a way that the fish seemed to swimming to the light and the logo, a visual metaphor for the vital connection between the college, students, faculty, and alumni."
"Sullivan's images are incredible," said Professor Emeritus of Biology David Krohne, a frequent contributor to the magazine whose photographs also have been WM covers. "That kind of photography is so difficult, and to be as good as he is already is remarkable."
You can see more of Sullivan's work at his Web site: http://500px.com/KMSullivan
While Sullivan's photo wraps both covers, inset into the back cover is another student photo: Senior Ian Baumgardner's image of a Sphinx Club member falling backward during the campus snowball marks the first time student work has graced both covers of the magazine. An award-winning photographer for the College newspaper, The Bachelor—named Division III Newspaper of the Year by the Indiana Collegiate Press Association—Baumgardner has also contributed photos from his coverage of a spring immersion course in Israel, and that work will be the Student Gallery for the upcoming Spring 2014 issue of the magazine.


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Sechs Chorlieder op. 32
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Sechs Chorlieder op. 32 (3. Fruhlingsliebe "Wenn der Fruhling kommt"). By Moritz Hauptmann (1792-1868). Edited by Juergen Juergens. For mixed choir (SATB). This edition: C 46788. Choral Music. Schott Chorverlag (Choral Music). Grade 3. Choral score. 2 pages. Published by Schott Music (SD.49001407).
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CDC Information
General Information
Should you have any questions about the health information in the region where you will be studying, please visit the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website at http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/. Along with a list of resource materials provided by the CDC, you will find information pertaining to the following categories: Outbreaks, Diseases, Vaccinations, Food and Water Safety, Traveling with Children, Special Needs Travelers, and Cruise Ships and Air Travel.
Helpful Links
CDC: Travelers' Health Report


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Immediately after the announcement parishioners banded together and formed the Committee to Save St. Brigid Church. Early on, this Committee was chaired by attorney Robert Bryan. Our mission was to save the church for divine worship and to continue the work of Jesus Christ in this community. Shortly after the announcement another church on the closure list, St. Paul's in Noe Valley, was saved from closure and is still open today. We were hopeful that St. Brigid could be reopened too.
One of the reasons given for closing the church was that expensive earthquake retrofitting would be needed. The cost estimate was $5.5 million. During a meeting with the Archdiocese on April 8, 1994, the offer was made that we, the parishioners, would raise any funds necessary to retrofit the Church. The Archdiocese rejected this, stating that allowing us to save our Church would favor a rich parish over ones that are poor.
We then made an alternative offer that we at St. Brigid would raise the funds necessary to save a poor church also. This offer was also rejected.
On June 30, 1994 the church was closed. We appealed this decision to the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome and to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican's high court.
On August 17, 1995, William J. Levada was appointed coadjutor archbishop of San Francisco, and on 27 December of the same year he succeeded John R. Quinn as the archbishop. Archbishop Levada opened two of the closed churches, St. Thomas More and All Hallows.
From 1994 – 2005 we continued to engage the Archdiocese in dialogue. We wrote many letters during this time to the Chancery. Many times we were told that no decision had been made about the future of the church. So we held onto the hope that the church could be reopened and that one day we would again hold Mass in our beloved church.
Then in February 2005 our worst fears seemed like they were going to come true. The Archdiocese announced that they were going to sell the church to a developer who wanted to demolish the church. Our local government immediately jumped in and moved to landmark the church. To do so they would have to get an exemption to state law, AB 133. This law, passed in 1994, allowed religious organizations to be exempt from local landmarking laws.
In October 2005, the Archdiocese sold the church to the Academy of Art University. After the sale of the building, our group shifted its focus to preserving the building.
In 2006 our dear friend and Chair of the Committee, Joe Dignan, died of a heart attack. Joe was a founding member of the Committee to Save St. Brigid Church and worked tirelessly over the years for the cause of saving St. Brigid's. Although we were all saddened by Joe's death, we remain committed to finishing the work he started – the landmarking of St. Brigid Church.
The exterior of St. Brigid Church, including the Harry Clarke stained glass windows, became San Francisco Landmark #252 on October 24, 2006. At that time, however, the San Francisco Planning Code did not explicitly provide for landmark designation of building interiors, and so the magnificent interior of St. Brigid Church was not included in the original landmark.
In January 2007, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, introduced legislation that would allow for the landmarking of publicly accessible interiors of privately owned buildings. The legislation was co-sponsored by Supervisor Aaron Peskin. The ordinance was reviewed and approved by the San Francisco Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, the Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors' Land Use Committee, and the Board of Supervisors. On April 20th, Mayor Newsom signed the legislation into law.
The passage of this law allows the Committee to pursue interior landmarking of St. Brigid Church. This is what we are currently working on and this is our final goal.
The closing of Catholic Churches is not unique to San Francisco. Nor are we the only Committee to Save St. Brigid Church. There is one in Manhattan. Countless churches throughout the country have been closed since 1994. How many churches have been closed in all? Is this downsizing really necessary? And how should parishioners of a church that is to be closed, be treated? These are questions that deserve answers.
Thank you for visiting our website and learning our story. We are also very grateful to the parishioners of St. Brigid, to our families and our friends for all the support and assistance they have given us. This has truly been a community effort, and we wouldn't have made it this far without them.
Beatriz St. John
Chair Pro Tem
Committee To Save St. Brigid Church
The Lost Parish"
3-Part Series on St. Brigid
SF Chronicle, March 2007


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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Lipscomb men's cross country team finished sixth while the women's cross country squad placed eighth in the NCAA South Cross Country Region Friday morning.
Both teams entered the event as the champions of the Atlantic Sun Conference. The races, hosted by the University of Alabama, were held on the Harry Pritchett Cross Country Course.
Juan Gonzalez, the A-Sun Freshman of the Year, led the Bisons with a 14th-place finish covering the 10-K course in 30:29.90.
"Juan ran great for his first 10-K," said Bill Taylor, director of cross country and track and field. "It was an all-time best individual finish for a Lipscomb runner. It was the first time we have had a men's runner win All-Region honors."
Sophomore Daniel Gardner was 28th with a time of 30:48.61. Also finishing in the top 50 were freshman Christian Freeman with a time of 31:07.85 and senior Geoff Musick in 48th place with a time of 31:16.78.
Rounding out the finishers for the Bisons were freshman John Kingstedt (66th, 31:40.49), sophomore Jared Wingerter (97th, 32:12.14) and senior Tim Muller (102nd, 32:20.95).
"We have such a young team," Taylor said. "We feel satisfied with the men's finish. We were 16th last year so this was quite a jump. It was the highest finish ever for the men in the region.
"I thought they ran really well. We are very excited for the men's future based on what we saw. We are headed in the right direction for sure."
Georgia was a surprise winner followed by Florida, Florida State, Auburn and Tennessee. There were 26 teams and 173 runners competing.
"The guys responded well," Taylor said. "They know what they are going to be in the future."
Taylor was concerned about injuries and sickness affecting the women's team. The eighth-place finish was lower than the seventh-place finish in each of the last two seasons.
"The women ran really well early," Taylor said. "They were in the top three in the first 2,000 meters. At 4,000 meters we had slipped to sixth. In the end we slipped two more spots.
"I have mixed emotions about the women. It wasn't a bad performance. It wasn't a good performance. It was a little surprising to me."
Sophomore Madi Talbert paced the women's team with a 32nd place finish in a 6-K time of 20:59.03.
Also in the top 50 was Sally Larson, A-Sun Freshman of the Year, with a time of 21:04.93 for 37th place. Senior Tessa Hoefle placed 44th with a time of 21:13.73.
Also crossing the finish line for the Lady Bisons were freshman Hannah Feiten (60th, 21:29.76), junior Dani Walker (62nd, 21:30.35), freshman Barbara Lee Ball (84th, 21:50.70) and freshman Kelsey Ibarra (111th, 22:08.64).
There were 194 runners and 27 teams competing.
"I didn't expect we would finish eighth after finishing seventh the last two years," Taylor said. "I felt like we had a better team than that especially with the South being weaker. That is disappointing that we didn't step up.
"We had a rough year. We had sickness. We had weird injuries. A lot has hit us this year. We were relying on a pretty young women's team overall."


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Thursday NBA
Thursday NFL
56-29-2 +4,205 (week 10: 5-2 +440)
Miami ML ~risk $5o to win $6o~
* keep an eye on Nuggets-Heat Game cause second half could be a real nice spot to take Denver tt over or 2H OVER, Heat played late last night @ Clippers and now tonight have to play in the high altitude of Denver and come second half fatique should be an issue, last night the clippers had 85 points by end of 3rd quarter so the heat are giving up alot and dont have "bigs" down low to contest the basket. Joel Anthony should see some more minutes and JaVale McGee, Koufos and Faried should dominate the glass with alot of 2nd chance points tonight,
heat gave up 48 second half point on the 11th (104 total) vs Mem
they gave up 58 second half on the 12 (113 total) vs Houston then gave up 55 second half to clipps last night and 107 total for the game. On Nov 3rd Denver dropped 116 pts on Heat and tonight Heat are without D-wade (foot injury) confirmed source- Rotoworld
^ Hope i dont disappoint u Buddy
@ Sparky- did u see my post about the last ufc, i answered your question about last ufc, thing started at 7am our time. im gonna look at the under card matchups tonight


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JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (March 18, 2010) - The ETSU baseball team is set to host USC Upstate in the conference home opener Friday at 6 p.m. at Cardinal Park. The two teams are slated to play a doubleheader Saturday starting at 3 p.m. to close out the series.
ETSU (10-4, 0-0 A-Sun) dropped a heart breaker to Tennessee Tech on Wednesday as the Golden Eagles won 6-5 on a walk-off hit. The Bucs are led offensively by centerfielder Matthew Scruggs (Knoxville, Tenn.) and first baseman Paul Hoilman (Johnson City, Tenn.). Scruggs leads the team in both average (.418) and doubles (8), while Hoilman leads the Atlantic Sun in home runs (8) and is first on the team in RBI (25).
The Bucs are 6-6 all-time against the Spartans. ETSU swept USC Upstate on the road last year powered by a seven RBI performance by sophomore Garrett May (Marietta, Ga.) in the final game.
The Spartans (7-11, 0-3 A-Sun) started the season with a 7-2 record, but have dropped nine straight games including three to Florida Gulf Coast a weekend ago. USC Upstate is led by Tyler Cook as he is hitting .408 with four doubles, one triple, two home runs and 17 RBI.
Live stats are available by clicking the link above. For more information on Buccaneer baseball or any other athletic news, please visit www.ETSUBucs.com.


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They call it the Garden, our national shrine, Arlington National Cemetery—and even now, on the sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq, the bodies keep coming in, thirty a day. For the men who do the burying, who actually touch the grief, grave digging is more than a job. It's a way of reckoning with who we are now as a country
We dug a hole in the Garden and laid the first body in. The sun rose, and we dug another in the clay. Put the second body in. Leaves bloomed and we dug a third, buried the body. The sun burnt everything brown in the Garden, and there were more bodies that went into the ground—on the hill, by the river, beneath the trees. We buried them through the swelter of summer and kept on when the leaves expired in the clutch of the first fall chill, through winter snow when our shovels sparked on the hard ground, until the spring rains, when the earth gave like pudding again.
By then, the bodies stretched to the horizon. We buried them to stop the redcoats and Confederates, the imperialists and fascists, the Communists and dictators, the extremists and evildoers. We buried slaves, Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers, Rough Riders and buffalo soldiers, casualties of the Spanish-American War, both world wars, Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War. We buried the 229 men of the USS _Maine, _all of whom went down to their deaths in Havana harbor. We buried a bor (Joe Louis), an actor (Lee Marvin), and an anchorman (Frank Reynolds). We buried astronauts who blew up in space, and those who caught fire on the launchpad. We buried a president who was shot in the head and then his brother who was shot in the head. We buried the remains of sixty-four people who died in the September 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon.
And so we've gone on burying and do this burying even now. On the eve of the sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq, the bodies are borne on transports from the deserts of Central Asia to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where they are identified and autopsied, and arrive at Arlington National Cemetery in a hearse. We drape the coffins with American flags, load them onto horse-drawn caissons, sound twenty-one-gun salutes. Most of the bodies are buried in a place called Section 60, more than 500 so far, of the 5,000 soldiers who've died at war since September 11. And so they join the other monuments to the dead here: _Downed aircraft, England; March 4, 1945… Downed aircraft, China; March 20, 1946… Killed in action, Korea… Armored personnel carrier attack, Iraq; March 31, 2004… _The constant music of the Garden is the relentless sound of shovels smashing earth, metal on rock, and somewhere in the distance the strange mechanical haunting of c_hink, chink, chink. _The dirt comes up in the bucket of a backhoe, casket after casket goes down, and dirt fills the gash again.
Meanwhile, the dead—they've always been more than bodies here. Among the hickory, maple, and sycamore, on this fertile piedmont, each marble tablet is thought to contain a sustaining story of heroism and selflessness. The generations echo, the blood of our sacrifice spills. Every soul ever laid to rest in the Garden becomes a part of our national myth; every burial becomes a regeneration.
The shovel goes in, the body goes down. We bury another.
The Garden is its own church, says Norman. He's a man of pencil-thin mustache and sleepy eyes—and he's lived almost a lifetime here. He knows the terrain as if it were his own body, because in some ways it is: Section 11 is nothing but unrelenting ground, the skull, so hard, in fact, that you need sharp teeth on the bucket to make a dent. Section 17 is soft as the palm of his hand…and so on. Norman, who is 55 years old, believes the very best of us resides here in Arlington National Cemetery. He's never questioned the bodily sacrifices made. He is our blind faith—and with God on his side, he fears no man.
For instance, the cemetery superintendent, his boss, John Metzler, is ranked as an army major general—actually living in a house up in Section 1—but driving by, Norman, who like all the gravediggers is a low-level government employee of no military rank, scrunches his face as if he's just tasted something sour and says, "Man—living in a cemetery: Now,_ that's_ kind of creepy." When a lost funeralgoer drives too slowly in front of him, he says, "You gonna move over, Dexter?" Or when one of his men leaves a Cushman parked blocking the road, he mutters, "This guy's stuck on stupid," then jumps out of his vehicle to get to the bottom of it.
The Garden is divided from the Pentagon by six lanes of highway and skirts the Potomac on the Virginia side, on lush farmland once possessed by George Washington's wife, with a mansion once inhabited by Robert E. Lee. It is alive with 9,000 trees, electric in its show of greenery. And yet at dusk, some say you can hear high-pitched shrieks in Babyland, the section where soldiers' children who died in infancy were once buried. They say voices call out from the USS_ Maine_ memorial up on its hill, sharp shouts and commotion, a reprise of the moment the ship was hit all over again, every crew member knowingly going down to death. They say in some photographs taken in the Garden you can see blobs or auras or ectoplasm floating above the marble headstones, the clouded souls of the departed.
Norman doesn't really buy that stuff. He doesn't believe in ghosts. And he should know: His life in the Garden started with years of roaming, with wheelbarrow and shovel, at all hours, filling the graves that had caved in, still about 10,000 a year. Then he was tapped to pick grave sites, marking them with wooden stakes. Later he worked on interments—and eventually became a supervisor. In the process, he was there for a redneck funeral when they turned a black man out, there all those times the Kennedys came to see their brothers, there the morning after soldiers on a drunk toppled the headstones. "A damn pity to have to see that," he says.
"If you think this is just a job," he says, "you need not apply."
Every morning forty gravediggers spread out across 600 acres, all dressed in blue jumpsuits with an Arlington patch on the right breast and their names on the left—PacMan and Lester, Montgomery and Gene, Robert Hughes and Ricardo—all armed with spreadsheets that detail the day's thirty burials. They ride aboard the grinding, beeping fleet of their heavy machinery: The backhoes start by scooping swaths of earth, leaving seven-foot-deep holes; the Tonnes rush in to remove the dirt; the gravesides are set up with chairs, sometimes tents, Astroturf, flowers, a podium. Placed near the hole, the coffin gives off a coppery gleam, reflecting sky. When the mourners first arrive, the gravediggers vanish like turkey in season, only to return after the funeral, after the horse-drawn caisson and the playing of taps and the flyover, the presentation of the triangled-up flag, and the lingering family that reluctantly ducks back into the black car that spirits them away.
Norman, who is now a foreman, is the one who helps make sure the diggers get it right, up every morning at 4:45 a.m. to catch the 5:25 a.m. bus from Fredericksburg, Virginia. By sunrise, the helicopters buzz overhead, important brass coming and going from the Pentagon; high-whistling passenger planes descend down the Potomac to Reagan National; the tourist buses lurch and cough, spewing soot over the throw of land; the walkie-talkie never stops squawking. ("Backhoe 4 to Backhoe 2, Montgomery's gone in with a hydraulic leak." "Sanchez, get your digging machine to Section 59. We need help burying out a cremate.") Through it all, Norman is the portrait of calm, tuning in his favorite radio station—Praise 104—as he cruises in his truck. He is our assurance and our righteousness, the deep belief that the Immense Being sides with our cause. He loves a bit they do about a moneygrubbing preacher who constantly talks about his private jet. Old Bishop Secular just about kills Norman, and Norman has one of those raspy, mirthful, almost kid-chuckles that make you want to laugh out loud before you know what you're laughing about.
In recent years, as Norman nears retirement, he has become an assistant pastor at a church down in Fredericksburg. And just last night, he attended a revival meeting, huddled with the people, Americans just like him, praying, bowed head to bowed head, in silent desperation. There was a mother whose son had killed a man, another struggling mightily at work. But the one who scared him most was the one who questioned her faith altogether. She wasn't sure she was a believer. "The one who doubts," says the book of James, "is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind."
If we need proof of God's existence, says Norman now, his belly resting up against the steering wheel of his truck, a horse-drawn caisson with a flag-draped coffin wending down a hill in the distance, then the 600 acres of Arlington National Cemetery would be a good place to start. The smell of bouqueted hyacinth and honeysuckle on a slow, humid breeze. The beams of light through the canopy. But the proof, as Norman tells us, is in the trees, the oak and elm, weeping beech and sweet gum, species representing the native-American landscape. And the odd thing (dare say, godly thing?) is that for all the storms that have hit here—and there are usually three or four fierce ones a year, with winds strong enough to tear up dozens of trees—maybe only once or twice has a downfall actually upended a headstone. In four decades. Strange, he says. Hundreds of fallen trees. They fall in between, out on the road, suspended and steepled over the stones—but they never seem to topple them. Such is the power of God.
"Hallelujah," says the preacher on the radio.
"Hallelujah," says Norman.
Reggie carries our shovel. He's our hands and feet, our legs and back, the Labor and Industry that built a country. His God is a little more practical and prone to humor, but in Reggie's eyes, it's been our human effort that has made the Garden its own Eden—and given it meaning. And that is a source of immense pride for him. Reggie discovered himself here. Came as a young man of 17, back when he was smooth, handsome, a "play-ah" who could have gone one of several ways (joined gangbangers from the hood, followed the path of his father, who had fifteen children, none of whom he really knew), and now he's got three kids of his own, sparsing curls on his head, and little aches from putting thousands of bodies into the ground—thirty a day, five days a week, forty-eight weeks a year—burying a piece of American history in each casket. The work has given him purpose.
"I didn't arrive thinking I'd spend the rest of my life here, that's for _damn _sure," he says. Though he came during the relatively placid Reagan years, he welcomed the challenge that arose, the unrelenting action in the Garden as the World War II generation began to die off and the Gulf wars escalated. And amidst the chaos, Reggie has always found his pleasure and his peace. He's always loved operating the machinery: the backhoes and Tonnes, the Cushmans and tamper. And he's always loved working outside in the fresh air and elements—the hard rain, the blizzards, the withering, humid days. "The worse, the better," he says. "I got a lot of warm clothes, and I don't mind the heat." His office is in Section 13, among the burial plots for the slaves. ("Wouldn't surprise me if there's some of my own family down there.") Or Section 2, where he goes each day to check on the special red maple he retrieved after a boondoggle to a nursery in Pennsylvania. ("Thought it was gonna die—and now look at it. It's kind of personal, me and that tree.") His office is out in the Columbarium, where generations of cremates are kept, or up on the ridge by the old Custis-Lee Mansion, from where you can look down on the Garden, past the eternal flame, to the monuments of the city across the river—Lincoln in marble contemplation, the Capitol dome hovering in that tangerine glow.
What drives Reggie is a part of our American myth, too: He's never been afraid of hard work. Never afraid to climb down in dark holes or up in broken trees. To domesticate a wild patch. To haul a casket or a headstone. To do what's asked, whatever it is. However low and hard, work has always been the purifying force. "I can't wait to get here in the morning," he says. "I can't wait to see what machine I get to ride. There isn't a job here I can't do."
And so, no matter how grumpy the other gravediggers, Reggie arrives each morning as a force of optimism in the predawn dark, saunters into the cafeteria to get his coffee with the guys. At his locker, he slips on his jumpsuit. At the morning meeting, he receives his assignment and studies the sheaves of stapled spreadsheets itemizing the time and name of the day's burials. On the way out, he ritualistically asks his buddy Darius, "How long's it gonna take you to smile today, Ray-ray?" And within minutes, Reggie's trumped up some mock fight, puffing his chest, railing on Darius, who's smiling wide. "So, wait, Ray-ray—you telling me that all of America's screwed up, everyone in all fifty states, because no one thinks Speed Racer's a better superhero than Spider-Man…'cept you?"
And then off he goes into the Garden, without complaint, in full possession of his fate. One important order of business this day is a funeral for a high-ranking active-duty soldier, a well-liked lieutenant colonel who was 41 years old and who died in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in a roadside bombing, along with three other soldiers. At the allotted hour, 300 people stream from the chapel down through the cemetery and gather at the grave. The band plays "Amazing Grace," guns are fired, wreaths are laid, a flag is presented to the lieutenant colonel's wife.
Afterward come the soldiers who knew this man, crisply uniformed, with buzz cuts, one after another kneeling before his coffin, mustering a prayer or good-bye, then stepping back with great ceremony and saluting very slowly. Then they wander off, pinching their noses, looking up at the sky, drifting among headstones and finding other dead that they know. Sometimes they kneel again and reach out a hand to touch another stone marker.
In grief, all the details kaleidoscope: the exact nature of death, how word reached the family and in this case the wife, just before their fourth anniversary. The newspaper reports that the couple cared for abused animals, that he was a champion for all underdogs. "He was one of the good ones," says a mourner, speaking out loud to anyone who will listen. "He was on the ground, trying to sort it out for us, for his country, to make it right. People just don't understand what it costs and how much it hurts to lose a guy like him."
When the family recedes and the last mourners leave, Reggie rides in with a group, to lower the casket. He bears witness for us, to the bodies going down, over and over and over again. He works the week like this, then takes Friday night for his posse of homeys, returning to his family in the Maryland subdivision where he lives, the one up on a hill with views clear back to Washington, D.C. On Saturday he may moonlight a little, driving a limo or doing electrical work in order to sustain. On Sunday, the seventh day, he curls up on the couch downstairs, beneath his Redskins blanket, watching football while his wife curls beneath her Dallas Cowboys blanket and their children buzz happily around.
Sometimes—at halftime, or maybe before dinner—he steps out on the back porch, from where he can see the National Cathedral and the Capitol dome, back down near the Garden. The wind in the bare trees sounds like a murmuring of ghosts. No, Reggie realizes, it was decided long ago that he would not be the one to throw himself on a grenade or overrun the enemy while mortally injured. He wasn't going to receive the Medal of Honor or a twenty-one-gun salute or a graveside paean by the secretary of the army. But he arrives again each Monday morning to bury the heroes who do, as they arrive from all points of the world.
"As hard as it is to bury some of these young guys, I look at it like this: My work makes me love my country a little more. And it's not like y'all need to feel sorry for the gravedigger. I've paid for ten vehicles, three houses, and one college education doing my job. It's an honor to get to do it."
Here comes one of those storms, the sky suddenly piling with black clouds, the first edge of violence that scythes through the Garden, de-limbing the trees, tearing everything apart. The rain is a deluge; an umbrella crashes against the plate-glass window in the cafeteria. Another digger, Kool-Aid, sighs. "You sometimes get the feeling that it'll never end," he says
What—the rain? War? Death?
"All of it," says Kool-Aid.
Kool-Aid is a 300-pound mountain of emotion, sensitive to every little tremor in the Garden. And it's a place full of tremors and strange happenings. Like the guy who was found dead on the eternal flame. (The cemetery historian came upon the half-scorched body the next morning.) Or the one dressed all in black, like a ninja, wielding knives, who challenged the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and then fled through the cemetery. Or the newly discharged honor guard, a soldier who rode the horse in the caisson, who went home and killed his wife, shot a police officer, and took his own life. What were these people trying to say? Or what was the Garden trying to say through them?
Once Kool-Aid had a man ask him for statistics on suicides in the cemetery, then slowly revealed that he was headed to his father's grave to kill himself. "The guy had diabetes and no benefits," says Kool-Aid. "The more I kept him talking, the more he lost his energy to do it, but you know, the system had let him down."
Now Kool-Aid's a hulk of flesh, fingers like Twinkies, a left eye that lazes askance. (His nickname, of course, comes from the '70s commercials in which a supersize round pitcher of beverage comes running to the rescue of the young and thirsty: Hey, Kool-Aid!) By appearance, he's not the sort you'd want to challenge, such would be the ease of his squashing you. His father was once a gravedigger—and now so is he. And a daddy himself, with a girl and boy. Being the commissioner of his town's youth football league—the same town where Reggie lives, Sunday mornings at the scraggly field behind the elementary school, observing kids in oversize pads bumper-car each other into submission—he was up half the night, doing the draft, sorting 10-year-old talent by team.
"Football is like war," he says. "To win, you're going to have to gamble a little. But in war that's gambling people's lives.
"Sometimes I just can't fit it in my head," he continues, "I see these stones out here, see that some kid was 18, 19. These are babies, man. Babies. And they could be any of us."
The feeling somehow becomes more acute and immediate out in the living memory box of Section 60: Before one headstone sits a tin of Copenhagen; before another, a bottle of half-drunk bourbon. There are packs of Newports and laminated pictures of wedding days, births of children, and buddies during good times. There are condoms and lipstick kisses on the marble headstones and colored stones on top and, in the nearby trees, glittering seasonal juju: blue stars or tinsel, American flags or stuffed bunnies. Leaning against one headstone is a birthday card with the picture of a little boy who has just learned to scratch out the name Daddy, three years after Daddy's death. And then there are the scrawled notes from friends and wives that say _I miss chillen with you brother _and _I wish we were together, you fussing over my pregnant belly and buying me those awful coveralls to wear like we planned. _
And, on hotel stationery, this note from a mother: _Hello son, I miss you so much it hurts and sometimes I'm so proud I can't stop smiling. You were a great son and I am very proud of you. Some times I feel your presents and some times I see you in my dreams. Those are the best times. We are together again and I get to give you those hugs I love so much. Well, I'll get in touch with you again real soon and please make more visits to me in my dreams. I would really like that. Love you Son, Mom xxoo. _
Sometimes Kool-Aid will stand a moment and watch the little kids at their fathers' graves, playing tag around the headstones (and there, in Kool-Aid's mind, his own smiling children finding him still alive after a football game); over there, a wife sitting blankly before another headstone, deep in her own unraveling midnight (his own wife cooking dinner with the assurance that he's soon to come back through the door). Sometimes, he'll unwittingly come upon one of those headstones of a young soldier who died in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and think: That boy never got to vote. Kool-Aid gets choked up and angry talking about it. "You know, he gave his life for his country, but the boy simply never got to vote." (And in that moment, that boy is Kool-Aid himself, bereft of everything, including the family that awaits him in future life.)
Who knew that grief feels so much like fear? And Kool-Aid carries it for us. That's his job. No, he's not the most efficient digger of the bunch, but perhaps that, too, is a function of grief. Kool-Aid is our mourning—for all the bodies laid down here—and the part that foresees our own death, too. He's the receptacle for our angst, so we can free ourselves of it.
"You hear something on the news," he says, "a roadside bomb has killed a soldier—and you know that in three, four, five weeks that body is coming here. You get a pit in your stomach, waiting. Someone has given their life for America. The least I can do is give them the honor they deserve when they come home."
After a moment passes, Kool-Aid looks up the marbled hill, then out to the marbled fields, surveys the city of the dead. He squints in a kind of forlorn expression of wonderment. "These gravediggers who've been here forty years," he says, "I have no idea how they keep doing it."
The dead are relentless, demanding. They are the amulets of our belief, but also the cost of our democracy. For their selflessness, we make them heroes. Or is it for our regret?
The dead are also the fact of war that forces us to unsettling visions of ourselves: What if these 600 acres, instead of bestowing glory, are really just evidence of bleak, godless endings in dark jungles and high deserts? What if the idea of selfless valor or American altruism that accompanies every headstone in the Garden has, over time, been undermined by the shifting sands of our self-interest? What if we're all about to be blown up for our righteousness? Might we allow the Garden to hold that possibility, too?
If so, perhaps only for a day, but it was a real day, when the magnitude of our self-doubt equaled our collective fear.
And it started with a domed sky of crinoline blue, fresh morning air in place of that summer swampiness, an aliveness that comes just before the leaves turn. Darrell, the other foreman of the gravediggers, was standing in the parking lot down at the bay after the morning meeting, about 9:30 a.m., in a huddle with a few of his men, working through the schedule. Darrell is a lanky man of raspy voice, with a blank, hangdog expression that betrays an intensity lurking beneath. He is our empathy and sense of duty, our stamina and pride. He considers every hour in the Garden a personal gift to be perfected. And there are times, long after everyone else has gone home, when you might see Darrell wading deliberately through a sea of marble headstones because he's seen one tilting funny or an overturned vase of flowers or a left-behind letter tumbleweeding in the wind. "I do my part," he says. "I'm one of the real lucky ones."
Being a twenty-seven-year veteran of Arlington, Darrell can intuit everything from the approach of a wicked downburst to flight patterns around the cemetery. The background noise—of machinery and aircraft, gunfire and traffic—plays through the familiar equalizer of his brain. And yet on this morning, he picked up something unusual: an increasing hiss from the sky over the annex across the highway, and when he looked up, there was a plane, quailing toward earth. It seemed like a dream, but there it was, a huge, silver-winged missile, its twisting shadow hurtling forth toward where he stood.
The men scattered: One ran into the garage, one hit the deck. Darrell just thought to run straight for the plane, straight at it so as not to be standing in the spot where it was coming. He was certain that if the Pentagon had a perimeter-defense system, it would launch a missile, which would kill them all anyway.
When the plane screamed over his head, he sprawled on the ground, burying his face, wind nearly ripping the clothes from his body. Seconds later, traveling at 530 miles per hour, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed, taking out light poles and accelerating into the Pentagon. There was a second of eerie silence, and then its explosion unleashed a monster ball of flame and temperatures of 2,000 degrees, bathing everything in the reflection of fire. In the west wing of the Pentagon, 125 lives were lost in the conflagration, along with the sixty-four on the plane, while a hundred yards away, at the cemetery bay, windows and lights were shattered, but there were no injuries of the physical kind. When Darrell got to his feet and looked back, smoke—a thick, black braid of noxious fumes—was billowing from the shattered building.
For a long time, the gravediggers stood in shocked silence, and as more and more returned to the bay from doing burials—the black cloud now hung over everything on their side of the Potomac—some of the diggers tried to get across the highway to help but were turned back. Meanwhile, others stood, still dumbfounded. One of the diggers had it particularly bad. He'd been working a backhoe in Section 69 where pieces of the plane ended up. He'd seen the faces of passengers in the windows just before impact. That day, as the Pentagon burned, he walked out of the Garden, got in his car, and drove straight to North Carolina—in order to escape.
As for the rest of the gravediggers, on September 11, 2001, in the hours after all the planes had hit, as the Pentagon smoldered and ambulances transported the badly burned to area hospitals, as the federal government shut down and everyone rushed to the safety of family and home, the gravediggers stayed right where they were. Fifteen hundred miles away, even Mount Rushmore was closed down, while one hundred yards from utter destruction, Darrell and his gravediggers went back to burying.
Whatever spasm of self-doubt shook us that day, it was soon crushed by our outrage, united as we immediately were in a cause to prosecute our enemies. Already the burial ground at Section 60 was designated for the inevitable casualties to come.
A new cycle began.
"It's no longer the dead I fear," says Darrell, seven and a half years later. "It's the living."
Seven and a half years later, Section 60 feels like a well-kept secret, if one kept in plain view. The bodies here are the young ones, the ones cut down in the prime of their lives. As one gravedigger puts it, "The dead in 60 are a different kind of dead than anywhere else."
Seven and a half years later, we have a new president, one for whom most of the gravediggers voted, and one who promises to end the war in Iraq (a move many of the gravediggers support) while redoubling our efforts to find a "hard-earned peace" in Afghanistan. Which means nothing to the sniper, the insurgent, and the terrorist. It means nothing to the roadside bomb or the Kalashnikov. The transports arrive with more bodies. We dig the hole and plant the body. Dig another—and another—put the bodies down.… 532… 533… 534…
"I was in Vietnam," one of the diggers blurts, after filling a fresh hole. "I understand what it means to serve. But we've been burying too many of these boys."
Now Reggie's standing over by the grave of Ross McGinnis in Section 60. Today it's a Code Blue, which means he's scrubbing headstones in a fury, swiping them with a rag, squirting them with a spray bottle for the pesky dirt marks. Reggie's our hands and feet, our legs and back, the Labor that built a country—and working nearby is Darius (a.k.a. Ray-ray) again, Reggie's best friend, who's Weedwacking, clearing clumps of grass from the base of Ross McGinnis's headstone to ensure unassailable spotlessness. When they're done, the men set up rows of chairs and then wheel in two tents to provide cover from the wilting sun. A Code Blue means that the gravediggers must make everything shine while remaining invisible, like a good dishwasher. A Code Blue means someone important has died. Or the president or secretary of the army is on his way. Or the Kennedys are coming to visit the grave sites of their brothers. Darrell says that every funeral here is a Code Blue.
Reggie knows nothing, except for what his notes indicate: how many holes need digging and where. This one says: 10 a.m., Specialist Ross McGinnis, 8544-60, Medal of Honor ceremony; Bronze Star, Purple Heart; Next of kin: Romayne and Tom McGinnis (parents); Becky and Katie (sisters).
What he doesn't know is that Ross A. McGinnis was the youngest soldier in Company C, a lover of poker and loud music and his job as a Humvee gunner. He has no idea that even in kindergarten, when asked to draw a picture of what he wanted to be someday, little Ross had drawn a soldier. While chewing the fat with one of his fellow soldiers sometime before he died, Ross wondered aloud how he might respond in a situation that required him to overcome his own instinct to live. And then riding in his sand-colored Humvee through Baghdad—his battalion on patrol, headed for the Abu Hanifa mosque—he'd been enthroned in the gunner's hatch when a grenade, tossed by an insurgent from above, sizzled by him. Before he knew what was what, the grenade had landed on the floor of the carrier, and he had a choice: jump and save his life (the obvious one), or jump and smother the grenade as it blew (the unimaginable one). As it was reported by one of four soldiers inside the Humvee, Ross yelled, "Grenade! It's in the truck!" And then, when he realized no one saw it, he smothered it with his body, saving the others.
As the crowd congregates for the ceremony, the unveiling of a new headstone with gold lettering, Reggie and Darius vanish. Ross McGinnis's parents stand off under the shaded canopy of trees. Three of the survivors from that grenade attack are back with Company C; the other one, on crutches, is still recovering, a full year and a half later. All of them are here now, at Ross McGinnis's grave, waiting. A dozen motorcycles pull up, and the Patriot Guard—a collection of leather-vested vets who regularly come here to honor the fallen—dismount, walk quietly across the field, assume a double-lined formation, and stand at attention, for Ross McGinnis. When the secretary of the army arrives in a black SUV and takes his seat, the McGinnises come forward. They could be any mom and dad of any 19-year-old kid living anywhere in America. Except two days ago the president handed them their son's Medal of Honor. And today they're here, for his golden headstone. His father seems gaunt in his dark suit, his mother fresh with grief. They look a little thunderstruck by all the heraldry.
The band strikes up a hymn. Then, when the music dies, the silence momentarily holds everything in place until the sound of weeping rises. The ceremony is brief. At Ross's burial here a year earlier, a lieutenant colonel said, As his flesh was torn apart, his name was written in history, but today a sergeant major intones the words Freedom is not free. A bagpipe plays. The golden headstone is unveiled. The sun beats down. The media snaps pictures. And finally, when it's over, the Patriot Guard stride quietly back to their motorcycles. Meanwhile, a long line forms to both congratulate and offer last condolences to Ross's parents and sisters. After the long good-byes, the lingering family, the salutes before Ross's headstone, the knee taken, the head bowed, the hand laid there on the stone as if it were Ross's shoulder, after the secretary of the army zooms off behind black-tinted windows again and the last of the motorcycles rev and the family and everyone else pry themselves loose from the magic emanation of that moment in the emerald circle around Ross's grave—the survivors walking Ross's parents back to their escort—that's when Reggie and Darius suddenly reappear and break down the tent, take away the dais, reset the flowers.
When a call comes in on the radio ("We need extra help with an oversized rock in 12," squawks another digger), Darius circles to answer it as Reggie scans the matted earth one last time. Knowing nothing about the boy, he's on his knees, brushing a blade of grass from Ross McGinnis's golden headstone. Pulls the rag from his pocket again. Sets the flowers just so. Reggie stands and folds the last of the chairs. When he walks away, Ross McGinnis is finally left alone. From a distance, his gold lettering can no longer be seen; his stone returns to the anonymous rows of our sacrifice.
There's a dream Kool-Aid can't shake. It's a nightmare that keeps coming, some sort of perversion he can't turn off, and it scares him. That familiar fear always lies right down beside him.
In the dream, he's in the Garden, lifting a very heavy casket, while the family of the deceased is standing nearby. He's thinking about the body in that casket, a body once weighted down by eighty pounds of guns and gear in Kandahar Province or Ramadi or Baghdad, thinking about that body's last moments on earth (was he joking with his friend when the IED engaged or the bullet pierced his forehead?), thinking about how this body was also a brother, son, father, husband. But whoever he is and whatever hero he's supposed to be, he's just a dead man now, an extremely heavy dead man, guessing 250 pounds or so. The family watches as Kool-Aid struggles with the casket, trying to lower it down into the grave. What happens next is that the coffin slips and crashes to the ground and the lid releases, flipping wide open. There's a collective gasp, and to Kool-Aid's astonishment there's no body or remains inside the casket. It's empty.
Now, the hardest part of the dream is not when he jolts awake next to his wife in bed. The hardest part usually occurs the next day in the Garden when he's doing exactly what he dreamed the night before, carrying a 250-pound body in a casket, lowering it into the ground. Which is when the panic sets in.
And what if the casket were to slip? It's happened before. This is a cemetery after all—and every burial is its own challenge, especially in the rain. But it's more than that. Kool-Aid lives every day inside these metaphors. The Garden whispers; the leaves vibrate; the black clouds billow. The babies in Babyland begin their shrieking, ectoplasm hovers. He is the proliferation of our grief and fear, but he's more: He's the possibility that we can no longer carry the weight of our democracy. Or his nightmare is. The ceremony is now empty, a remnant verging on meaningless. Only the pain is real.
Here's Norman, talking to God again. He's sitting in his truck, window down, on Bradley Drive between Sections 60 and 66, breathing the air in big, gulping breaths. Among the quarter million headstones—Downed aircraft, New Guinea; September 15, 1943… Aircraft accident, Laos; January 11, 1968…—among the cedar and red elm, he sees the living everywhere. He brims with joy and happiness. He says, "Rejoice!" He says, "God breathes in your ear and gives you second life."
Meanwhile we dig the hole; we lay the body in. We listen for the murmur of ghosts. If it were true, if there were proof of His powerful glory among the marble markers of our democracy, would we have enough sight to see it? If the glory were really ours, wouldn't it then be easier to convince the world that we are the righteous ones?
Norman tells us it's a matter of faith. We will be sorely tested, like Job, and yet we must believe. We will be pushed to the brink, and we will return in full glory. His own brother was shot in a club years ago. The diggers came from the Garden to his funeral in Charles County, Maryland, with their shovels, then cut a hole in the earth by hand, like gravediggers did before machinery—the chink, chink of metal on dirt sounding like a hymn. They dug the hole and laid his body in. As sad as it was, it was an unbelievably joyful moment. His brother took wing and was truly free.
_He breathes in your ear and gives second life. _
Now his phone rings. It's Darrell, who's spending his annual week in the mountains, away from everything, but he still feels compelled to call: Is it all right there? And Norman sits with his engine idling, Praise 104 on the radio, laughing a little with Darrell, taking in the lay of the land, when two women approach, and knock on his window.
They want to lodge a complaint. Norman nearly jumps right out of the truck, and they lead him up to their father's grave site in Section 65. Their daddy's name is Bill Morant, a Vietnam War vet who died about ten years ago, and these are his daughters, women who seem to be in their thirties, named Linda and Kathy. They show Norman that the black paint once filling his carved name on the headstone has washed away, which troubles them. Their eyes seem puffy from crying.
Though every headstone is eventually washed clean of its paint by the elements, from the torrential rains brought by the storms that take down the trees, though every soldier eventually reverts to these rows of marble blankness, the sisters want their father's name painted back on his headstone. Norman talks to them for the next twenty minutes, not about the marker but about their father.
One of the daughters relates a story about how General Westmoreland showed up at an event that their uncle once attended and, recognizing their uncle's last name on his tag, came forward and said of their father that he was a good soldier. General Westmoreland, of all people! Didn't even know Daddy had met the man. The daughters are smiling as they tell the story, but then one's eyes turn moist again, and so does her sister's. They both would really like something done about the gravestone. They insist he be remembered this way.
Everything in the Garden is bathed in tangerine light again. In the distance, another burial: the diggers doing this work in our name now, because we've handed them our shovel, paid them a wage, asked them to bear witness in our stead. There is nothing particularly beautiful about what they do, and despite the solemnity of this sacred ground, the prosaic fact of their work persists: They dig in dirt and mud, burying thousands upon thousands of dead bodies, limbs, remains.
Norman has now pulled out a small notepad and is jotting down a quick note with the number of Bill Morant's grave, Bill Morant who was once a living man, who was a good soldier, who was loved by his daughters, who was buried with pomp and, at least in Norman's mind, found final release and was forgiven. Blessed is the righteous man; he shall be delivered.
When it comes time to say good-bye, Norman doesn't offer condolences or weak platitudes. He looks both sisters in the eye and in that calm, unwavering voice of his, says, "We'll get you a new headstone out here. It's the least we can do."
michael paterniti is a _ gq correspondent._


text:
3-200 Personal Equipment
To provide regulations and procedures regarding the distribution, maintenance and possession of both City-owned and personal police-related equipment. (12/30/10)
While working, sworn MPD employees shall only carry and use equipment and weapons that have been authorized by the MPD Training Unit, and only the weapons the employee has been trained to use by the MPD Training Unit or its designee.
The MPD Training Unit shall be responsible for conducting research and product testing of any new equipment or weapons prior to authorization for carry and use by sworn MPD employees. Documentation of any employee authorized to conduct field testing of new equipment or weapon shall be retained by the MPD Training Unit. (07/19/07)
MPD employees shall comply with directives as outlined unless otherwise authorized in writing by the Chief of Police or his/her designee. (12/30/10)
- Equipment shall not be altered in any way to change its general appearance or function. (03/08/02)
- All MPD purchased equipment shall be marked with the full "Minneapolis Police" designation before issue/use. Markings may include "Mpls Police" or "MPD." Police Stores will provide uniform markings and advise units of the best marking for equipment type. If equipment is purchased/shipped directly to a unit, the commander shall ensure that the items are brought to Police Stores for Department marking before use. This directive does not apply to standard "police" labeled clothing. (07/19/07) (12/30/10)
- All employees on leave of absence in excess of 180 days, disability status, resignation, termination or retirement shall relinquish all city-issued equipment immediately upon the start of such status to Police Stores. A CAPRS report will be filed for any item not returned. (03/08/02) (03/01/05) (07/19/07) (12/30/10)
- MPD employees under suspension shall report as ordered and surrender their badges, identification card and any other city issued equipment requested by the Internal Affairs Unit.
- No employee may wear the MPD uniform, be armed, or carry a badge or police identification while under suspension. (07/19/07)
- During a suspension period, an employee cannot carry a weapon based on their status as a licensed peace officer with the Minneapolis Police Department. This also includes the ability to carry a weapon into other states based on federal law. An employee may carry a weapon during the suspension period, provided they have other legal authority to do so (e.g. State of Minnesota Permit to Carry a Handgun). (12/30/10)
- The City of Minneapolis will issue the following equipment to all sworn employees: (12/30/10) (07/01/11)
- Ammunition
- Bloodborne Pathogen Kits
- Breast Badge
- Chemical Agent
- Gas Mask (APR)
- Gas Mask (APR) Carrier
- Gas Mask Filter
- Hat Badge
- Identification Card
- Name Tag
- Office Keys
- Pocket Reference Manual
- Police Radio
- Riot Helmet
- Riot Stick
- Shoulder Patches (10)
- Squad Car keys
- Traffic Vest
- The City of Minneapolis may issue the following equipment to civilian employees:
- Cellular Phones
- Office keys
- Identification Card
- Other equipment as deemed necessary by the Precinct/Division Commander.
- The City of Minneapolis may issue additional equipment (tactical and administrative) to employees as needed for specialized assignments. (12/30/10)
- Every sworn MPD employee shall supply the following equipment at his/her own expense:
- Firearm (handgun)
- Leather equipment and accessories
- Handcuffs
- Flashlight
- Impact Weapon
- Every sworn MPD employee shall carry the following equipment unless assigned to undercover duty where it is necessary to conceal their identity. (12/30/10)
- MPD issued ammunition
- MPD authorized badge
- MPD authorized firearm
- MPD authorized handcuffs and key
- MPD issued identification card
- MPD cell phone (if issued)
- When working plainclothes, sworn MPD employees shall wear an authorized firearm in such a manner that it will not attract attention or be open to public view.
- Every sworn MPD employee working in a uniformed capacity shall carry the following authorized equipment and weapons. (11/06/07) (12/30/10)
- MPD authorized CED (if issued)
- MPD authorized impact weapon (optional for those issued a CED)
- MPD issued chemical agent
- MPD authorized flashlight
- MPD authorized hobble
- MPD authorized nametag
- MPD issued portable radio
- Every sworn MPD employee working in a uniformed capacity shall have accessible the following equipment: (12/14/07) (07/01/11)
- MPD issued gas mask (APR)
- MPD issued gas mask (APR) Carrier
- MPD issued gas mask filter
A. Handcuffs (03/08/02) (07/19/07)
1. Every sworn MPD employee shall carry at least one set of handcuffs while working in a uniform or plainclothes capacity.
2. Handcuffs shall comply with the following requirements:
a. Authorized Brands: Smith & Wesson or Peerless
b. Authorized Styles: Hinged or Chain
c. Double locking mechanism
d. Black or Chrome finish
3. Plastic handcuffs may be used to supplement standard handcuffs in emergency situations.
a. Plastic handcuffs may be used in mass arrest situations and should be available in all sergeants' vehicles.
b. Plastic handcuffs should not ordinarily be used in felony arrests or for restraining mentally ill individuals.
c. When using plastic handcuffs, the employee should monitor the arrestee to prevent injury. (03/01/05) (07/19/07)
B. Hobbles (07/19/07)
1. Uniformed employees shall have the hobble readily accessible in their duty vehicle or on their person.
2. The hobble shall be of the authorized brand RIPP Restraint Hobble.
C. Flashlights (03/08/02) (07/19/07)
1. Every sworn MPD employee shall carry a flashlight while working in a uniform capacity.
2. The flashlight shall comply with the following requirements:
a. Diameter not to exceed 1-1/2 inches
b. Black finish
c. Minimum of two cells or equivalent
d. Maximum of five cells or equivalent
D. Knives - Employees may carry a knife as a tool. The knife blade length shall not exceed 4 inches. (03/08/02) (07/19/07)
E. Traffic Whistle - If used, traffic whistles shall be of military or police design only. (03/08/02)
F. Chemical Agents (10/30/02) (09/04/12) (07/01/13)
1. Every sworn MPD employee shall carry a 4 oz. canister of chemical agent on their person at all times while working in uniform. In addition, canisters larger than 4 oz. may be carried by sworn MPD employees when authorized by a supervisor. (07/01/13)
2. Employees shall only carry the chemical agent issued to them by the department. (07/19/07)
3. Authorized chemical agents are: (09/04/12)
a. Aerko Freeze +P, 1% CS/1% OC
• 4 oz 2k3
• 17.5 oz M9 Streamer
b. Defense Technology Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) Solution .2%
• 12oz MK9 Streamer
G. Batons (Impact Weapons) (03/08/02) (07/19/07) (12/30/10) (07/01/13)
1. Every sworn MPD employee, whose job assignment would reasonably require them to respond to 911 calls or initiate calls for service, shall carry an impact weapon while working in uniform unless issued a CED. Impact weapons are optional for employees issued a CED.
2. The impact weapon shall comply with the following requirements:
a. Authorized Brands – ASP or Monadnock
b. Overall extended length not to exceed 26 inches.
c. Black or Chrome finish
H. Riot Stick (07/19/07)
1. Every sworn MPD employee, while working in a uniformed capacity, shall keep in their possession (and readily available, i.e. in the squad) a riot stick for response to civil disturbances when needed.
2. Employees shall only carry the riot stick issued to them by the MPD.
I. Conducted Energy Device (CED) (07/19/07) (12/30/10) (07/01/13)
1. Sworn MPD employees shall carry a CED (if issued) while working in a uniform capacity.
2. The CED shall comply with the following requirements:
a. Authorized Brand – TASER®
Authorized Model – X26
Authorized Ammunition – TASER® Brand compressed air cartridges (Department issued only)
b. Authorized Brand - TASER®
Authorized Model - X2
Authorized Ammunition - TASER® Brand compressed air smart cartridges (Department issued only)
J. Reflective Vests - All sworn MPD employees shall wear reflective vests when involved in traffic direction or control. (03/08/02) (07/19/07)
- Riot helmets shall be maintained by each sworn employee and shall be kept at the employee's duty assignment at all times. Helmet bags shall be used to protect the helmets while in storage or during transport. (07/19/07)
- The helmet shall have:
- The employee's badge number placed on the front and rear of each helmet.
- The front of the helmet shall have the employee's badge number centered and placed no more than ¼ inch above the badge insignia.
- The rear of the helmet shall have the employee badge number centered and placed two inches above the base of the helmet.
- The badge number stickers shall be no less than one inch in height and shall be black with a white background. (07/19/07)
- The MPD badge insignia placed on the front of the helmet.
- The badge insignia shall be centered in the front of the helmet and placed directly above the base of the visor.
- Supervisors shall have gold badge insignia
- Officers shall have silver badge insignia.
- The employee's badge number placed on the front and rear of each helmet.
- MPD Stores Unit personnel will provide badge number stickers for placement on helmets. (03/01/05)
- Additional markings shall not be placed on the helmet unless directed to do so by a supervisor.
To provide procedures for the use, standards and specifications, and reimbursement of body armor worn by sworn employees and to maximize the Minneapolis Police Department's opportunities to receive Federal grant funds.
To maximize officer safety through the use of body armor in combination with prescribed safety procedures.
- The wearing of body armor is mandatory for all sworn employees while wearing the uniform when working on or off duty, who are involved in any enforcement activities.
- Sworn employees electing to wear a body armor external vest carrier shall adhere to the standards and specifications outlined in section 3-121.08 of the MPD policy manual.
- Ballistic Vest Reimbursement (see also, Minnesota State Statute 299A.38)
- Only vests that either meet or exceed the requirements of standard 0101.03 of the National Institute of Justice or that meet or exceed the requirements of that standard, except wet armor conditioning, are eligible for reimbursement.
- The State of Minnesota provides reimbursement for the purchase of an eligible ballistic vest every 5 years (plus 1 day) to Minnesota peace officers. The amount of reimbursement is adjusted yearly by the Commissioner of Public Safety.
- The City of Minneapolis will match the amount reimbursed by the State.
- The amount reimbursed by the State and City is determined based on the purchase date of the vest.
- Reimbursement Process
- The sworn employee seeking ballistic vest reimbursement shall:
- Keep documentation of his/her own ballistic vest purchases.
- Complete the City of Minneapolis Employee Reimbursement Form and the Vest Reimbursement State Form. These forms are available on MPDnet.
- Mail the State form to the State.
- Forward the completed Employee Reimbursement Form to Police Administration. A copy of the itemized invoice/paid receipt for the ballistic vest purchase must be attached to the form.
- The sworn employee seeking ballistic vest reimbursement shall:
Last updated Oct 5, 2018