It’s a dog’s life among graves in Washington cemetery

Dog owners are a powerful breed in the United States, particularly when they work in packs.

The Congressional Cemetery, almost two miles east of the US Capitol, had become overgrown with waist-high grass and weeds when, in the 1990s, local canine lovers decided to turn this beautiful area near the Anacostia river into a playground for their pets. These rolling grounds, Washington’s answer to Pere Lachaise, is how the area looked before French-born architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant designed the city.

The dog owners inspired the restoration of the cemetery. A self-taxing society the group charges a fee of $225 every year and $50 for each dog. The attraction is that this is the only place on Capitol Hill where dogs can roam off the leash over 35 acres of walled-in ground.

The cemetery has 600 members and 700 dogs. Their fees cover a quarter of the $1 million (€730,000) annual budget to maintain the graveyard. It is a novel idea at a time when many cemeteries are struggling to pay for the cost of upkeep. The cemetery also has the added financial advantage of having about 1,000 burial sites left to sell.

“Especially now when a lot of historic cemeteries are struggling, they are trying to find new ways of making money,” said Lauren Maloy, the cemetery’s programme director.

The graveyard enjoys a very low incidence of vandalism thanks to its four-legged visitors. “No one is going to do anything bad when there is a big Rottweiler walking around,” said Maloy.

National burying ground While the private enterprise of local residents is admirable, it is remarkable that this 207- year-old graveyard, which by 1820 had become known as the "national burying ground" owing to the number of prominent figures buried here, was not maintained by members of Congress whose predecessors have their final resting place here.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore visited the cemetery last Wednesday on a visit to Washington and laid a wreath at a memorial to the 21 young women and teenage girls of Irish extraction killed in an explosion 150 years ago this week a few miles away at the Washington Arsenal during the American civil war.

On June 17th, 1864, the workers, many of whom had lost fathers and husbands fighting in the conflict, were contributing to the Union side’s war effort by filling bullet cartridges with gunpowder. Fireworks drying nearby set off flares engulfing in flames the “choking and packing room” where the women worked.

The death of the women tugged at the heart of the city. President Abraham Lincoln himself attended their funerals and members of the public funded the memorial at the Congressional Cemetery, around which red "Lincoln" and yellow "St Patrick" roses now grow.

Steve Hammond, a local historian, said he could find no record of the memorial, completed a year after the tragedy, being dedicated. At the time the city was preoccupied by the conspiracy trial into the assassination of Lincoln, which took place beside the Washington Arsenal at what is now the Fort McNair army post.

“The country was so sick of death and dying that they could not bring themselves to do it,” said Hammond.

J Edgar Hoover

Among the estimated 60,000 people buried at Congressional Cemetery lie the remains of notable figures. J Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), the first director of the FBI, rests in his family plot. Eleven graves away are the remains of

Clive Tolson

(1900-1975), Hoover’s associate director and lifelong companion. Tolson wanted to be buried as close as possible to Hoover.

Five plots away from Tolson is the grave of Leonard Matlovich (1943-1988), the Vietnam War veteran and first gay member of the US service member to out himself to fight the ban on homosexuals in the military. "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one," reads his epitaph.

The most senior political figure in the cemetery is Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814), the fifth vice president of United States, to President James Madison.

The manipulation of electoral boundaries became known as “gerrymandering” when in 1812, as governor of Massachusetts, Gerry signed a bill into law that changed the state’s borders to benefit his party. The story goes that an opponent thought one redrawn congressional district looked like a salamander, coining a phrase that is today blamed for contributing to the deep divisions in Congress.

Also buried here are Tom Lantos (1928-2008), the only Holocaust survivor elected to Congress and John Philip Sousa (1854-1932), the military march composer. One of his tunes, the Liberty Bell, is perhaps better known as the theme to Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Next to his grave, along the brick paths of this gently undulating hidden gem in the US capital, march happy dogs followed by their owners.