Speak Out

I have family members buried in Antioch Cemetery at the former Fort McClellan, and we have had access to the cemetery taken away from us by the powers that be.

My great-grandparents are buried there and we cannot get to the cemetery to keep the grass cut or put out flowers. Members of my family have been going since Sept. 26, 1908, and July 20, 1923, when they were buried there. The cemetery was there way before the fort was.

There are no explosives in this cemetery.

Prior to a ditch being dug across the road below the cemetery, I personally have ridden a lawn mower there cutting grass. So has my brother. My husband has walked it with a push mower and weedeater and we have not been blown up!

The Star published an article Oct. 6, 2006, that mentioned that the road was barricaded then, and now it is almost two year later. My great-grandparents are mentioned by name in that story. They are Andrew Jackson Fair and Fannie Mayes Fair.

There is also a small child buried there, Eloise Haywood, who burned to death after catching her clothes on fire. She was 3 years old. She is the daughter of my great-aunt and uncle, Sadie Fair and Walter Haywood.

My mama, Lillaree Fair Miller, is 94 years and six months old. She and her sister, Betty Ann Fair Newsome, are very upset that they cannot get to the cemetery.

My mama was born at Dark Corners, a place on the former fort property before the fort was built. My mama is very spry and healthy and she was so disturbed that nobody from our family got to clean the graves and put out flowers as her parents always did. She is very unhappy, and so is her sister, Betty Ann.

All I see in The Star is the Anniston City Council, the Calhoun County Commission and the Joint Powers Authority arguing over who can do what and who has control over the fort property. I would like to ask the City Council and Commissioners Eli Henderson, Robert Downing, Rudy Abbott and J.D. Hess if this were your parents or grandparents, would you have this happen for this long?

I think this is absolutely ridiculous and a waste of our tax money. Would Star Publisher H. Brandt Ayers leave his mother's grave untended for such a period of time? I don't believe so.

We did not have the pleasure of honoring our family on Memorial Day by taking flowers and cleaning the graves that weekend.

Also, there were two gates on the fenced cemetery and they are now gone.

Mary Ann Ferguson lives in Anniston.