Oakland Cemetery Tornado Damage Update

The Historic Oakland Foundation now has a page up on their web site describing some of the damage to the property with a few photographs from the grounds, here:

Historic Oakland Cemetery Badly Damaged

As they state and as I discovered on Saturday, the property is currently closed for the reasons described in the article.

If you’ve enjoyed my writing and photography on this site and have ever thought about supporting it, please consider making a financial contribution to Oakland’s rebuilding efforts instead. The address for donations (also listed at the end of their article) is:

Historic Oakland Foundation
248 Oakland Avenue SE
Atlanta, GA 30312

Here are a couple of photographs I took back in November, 2007, while researching the Cemetery’s history, showing the Fickett monument:

Here’s that same monument now (photograph from the Foundation’s article):

If you’ve been following my series of articles on the Cemetery or have looked at any of my Flickr pictures of the property, you know I consider it a treasured historical and community resource unlike anything I had ever seen until I started learning about it. If you’re able to make even a small donation to helping the Cemetery’s reconstruction efforts, you’ll be honoring the memories of those who are buried there and you’ll also be recognizing the critical significance of Atlanta’s few remaining truly historical sites. Give Oakland a bit of help and I guarantee you that the next time you consider the meaning of some place of history or community that matters to you, you’ll look at it with a greater awareness and understanding of what these places really mean to our lives, our neighborhoods, and our place in this world.

I’ll be resuming my articles on the Cemetery and the neighborhood’s history within a few days….