By James Scott Baron, The Free Lance–Star
Dec 2, 2019
As far as Mike Burns is concerned, it’s a project that may not be completed in his lifetime, but he’s going to keep doing it as long as he’s able.
Burns, a retired Marine Corps aviator, as well as a member of the Civil War Round Table of Fredericksburg, is leading a headstone upgrade effort at Fredericksburg’s Confederate Cemetery to further honor the 3,553 fallen soldiers interred there.
Burns’ efforts center on enhancing each of the cemetery’s existing 800 white Georgia marble headstones by eventually adding new granite flat stones to the base of each one of them.
“Many of the marble markers are weathered, they are worn, some are broken, some have the name misspelled, and some have the data incomplete,” said Burns. “We do our research and correct all the errors that we can find, knowing where that particular soldier lies, and get a new marker for him with the correct information.”
Burns described the symmetrical design of the Confederate burial area within the cemetery as a “Southern Cross.” He said the white marble headstones that stand in the cemetery today were installed in the 1880s. Those stones replaced the rows of wooden posts that were originally used as grave markers by locals who buried the fallen Confederate soldiers following the Civil War.
Replacing the existing vertical stones with new horizontal granite stones would change the visual appearance of the cemetery significantly, something the Ladies Memorial Association doesn’t want to happen.