“Barbara, I found it!” My brother Donald called out to me from across the lush, overgrown grass and mostly obscured grave markers of Fort Lincoln Cemetery. For the past twenty minutes he and I had been on a hunt in this long-established resting place in Colmar Manor, Maryland, right outside the District of Columbia. Rush hour traffic sped by on the other side of the iron fence, mostly moving east into Maryland’s Prince George’s County suburbs or on to Anne Arundel or Calvert Counties. I looked up from the marker where I stood, about 100 feet from my brother. I had been scraping cuttings of dried grass from its face, mostly with the tip of my New Balance shoe, trying to decipher the name. So far I had cleaned off dozens of markers, all of which were level with the ground. I had used my foot and sometimes by hands, quietly disappointed by each. A few swipes across each marker showed either letters that did not fit the name of my query or dates of birth and death that did...
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