What started as an article for the News Review ended with writer Kyla Hanington receiving an award from the Prince George’s County Historical Society on April 9. At the St. George’s Day celebration, which is held annually by the historical society, Society Librarian Susan Pearl officially thanked Hanington, giving her an award “in recognition for your research and restoration work on the Greenbelt Turner Cemetery.”
The project started in August 2015 when Hanington accepted an assignment to write about the cemeteries of Greenbelt. “I thought it would be a puff tourism piece,” she said. [And so did the assigning editor who happens to be the author of this article.] She was expected to cover the grave of the Revolutionary War soldier at Golden Triangle, the Hamilton Cemetery off of Hamilton Place and Greenbelt’s Turner Cemetery (also known as Greenbelt Cemetery) on Ivy Lane. Hanington went to the cemeteries and started researching.
The first two were interesting but not complicated. The Turner Cemetery, however, was in bad shape. Gravestones were buried in brambles. Some gravestones were unmarked, but carefully placed. For more on this story, click here.