Photo by Kate Barton
Ivy Hill General Manager Lucy Goddin
Lucy Goddin welcomes a guest to "the vault" at Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria.
It's a frosty Saturday morning at Ivy Hill Cemetery but its general manager, Lucy Burke Goddin, is laughing as she tells the tale of finding her own plot.
"I laid down in the grass and tried out the spot," she said. "Partly I did that because I want my family to laugh when the day comes."
Goddin has worked for years helping keep history alive at the 162-year old cemetery at 2823 King St. in Alexandria. She is on the cemetery's board and is a member of the Ivy Hill Cemetery Historical Preservation Society.
Earlier this year, the former teacher (at Arlington Unitarian Cooperative Preschool) came on board the staff to run the cemetery as its general manager.
"My job is to preserve, protect and promote the history, flora and fauna of Ivy Hill," she said. "In Victorian times, they cleaned the graves and held picnics — they spent the day. It gave them a time to be together." Today you might see people walking their dogs or taking a morning stroll. The cemetery just asks that people be respectful if they see a funeral service in progress.
"Some see it as disrespectful," Goddin said. "I hear you, I kind of agree. But it's more disrespectful to let this place go to ruins."
That realistic view of death and dying is something that Goddin is passing down to her own children, one of whom worked at the cemetery over the summer, digging graves. Goddin said there was a day when a family came out to prepare the grave site for a family member. "They were here for three hours, 14 family members," she said. "They had such a healing day. That's my personal mission."
Goddin estimates that the nearly 23-acre cemetery will run out of space in 10 to 15 years and has added four new cremation gardens to accommodate more souls.
The cemetery is home to history lectures, and Edgar Allan Poe and Guillotine Theatre readings, which are often held in "the vault," built in the 1850s. Carved into a hill at the cemetery, the brick and concrete vault was once used as a receiving and holding space for bodies before they were buried. The small space is now used as a gathering spot for events held at the cemetery and has even hosted candlelit dinner parties.
Some of the famous names you might encounter on gravestone tours at the cemetery are from some of Alexandria's most prominent families including the Greens, the Leadbeaters, the Stablers, Burkes, Herberts and Carlyles.
The cemetery came into being when Hugh C. Smith's estate sold the land to 30 Alexandrians after his death. Smith was the owner of Wilkes Street Pottery, started by his father Hugh Smith.
