Family's grave concern is protecting their roots By J. TAYLOR RUSHING Advocate staff writer Photo courtesy of Mark Shook Mark Shook of Mesquite, Texas, stands in a field near Central High School in January at the grave of his great-grandfather, Arthur Lee McGowan. When Arthur Lee McGowan died at an Atlanta military base more than 80 years ago, he left his family his name, his red hair and a decades-long disappearing act. McGowan fought in and survived World War I only to die of pneumonia shortly after the war. He never knew his three-year-old son, who took his first name, or his grandson, who took his middle name. His red hair skipped two generations -- neither his son or grandson had it -- until his great-grandson was born with it. He was buried in one of eight graves in a field near Central High School, which stayed hidden from his descendants for 53 years until this year. But his family also share a problem with many other families today: The graves of their ancestors are on land that no longer belongs to them and may one day be sold. The graves, off Wax Road in Central, are surrounded by a barbed wire fence and covered with weeds. They are the final resting place of McGowan along with his mother, brother, father and several in-laws. Their living descendants include Mark Lee Shook of Mesquite, Texas; his brother, Jon Arthur Shook of Austin, Texas; and their mother, Sue Shook of Branson, Mo. The McGowan and Shook families split at one point, scattering family members into surrounding states. The land gradually fell out of the family's hands, and is now owned by Lloyd Pickering of Baton Rouge. The Shooks have talked to Pickering, who has maintained the graves. In a brief phone interview, Pickering said he has honored the graves and has no immediate plans to develop the land, although he might sell it to someone who could. That has the Shooks concerned. "We don't want to own the land, and we don't want any money," said Sue Shook. "For so long, nobody knew that cemetery was there. Now, we just want to know it's protected so 50 years from now my grandsons can know. Mr. Pickering is making an effort to protect it, but we want to be sure." To a point, the Shooks have state law on their side. Title Eight of the Louisiana Revised Statutes says graves cannot be disturbed without written permission of the buried person's next of kin or by obtaining an order from the parish's district court. Graves on private land can also cause problems for genealogists. Barbara Comeaux Strickland, a member of the Louisiana chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists and the Baton Rouge Genealogical and Historical Society, said it can sometimes be difficult to find a grave without trespassing. "You have to tread very carefully," she said. "You don't want to face the barrel of a shotgun. It could easily happen; you're on their turf." Strickland also pointed out that tombstones are sometimes the only record of a person's death. "If that's destroyed, the death information might be lost forever," she said. "A lot of inscriptions have been transcribed, but not all of them." Strickland herself has several ancestors, including her great-great-grandmother, Amelia Hebert Babin, buried off Highland Road near Majestic Oaks subdivision. There are only a few visible graves near the road -- Strickland said several of them have already been covered up by houses. "Every time I drive by, I always look to see if Amelia is still there," she said. "These graves take more policing than they're getting. You would think people would have more respect for a final resting place, but when something falls into a forgotten state, it's up for grabs." Betty Roberts, a regulatory officer at the state Cemetery Board in Metairie, said the situation is common and that family burial grounds remain popular today, especially in the parishes of St. Tammany, Tangipahoa and Livingston, where there are dozens of them. "There's a big trend there," she said. "They're very, very popular… What I'm hearing is that it's because of the cost, since other cemeteries cost more. And a lot of people, especially in rural areas, have property that came down generation to generation and they just have a yearning in their hearts." Roberts said East Baton Rouge Parish has only three registered family cemeteries -- Demur Cemetery at 12911 Sullivan Road, Carl Vernon Corley Cemetery on Plank Road in Zachary and the Young Family Cemetery at 1640 Pride-Port Hudson Road in Zachary. It took the Shooks a year to find the graves on Pickering's land. Using the Internet and word-of-mouth, they finally found a distant relative who directed them to the field this past January. Sue Shook had not stood before the graves since she was a seven-year-old girl, in August 1947, before her family left the Baton Rouge area. Her 53-year-old photograph of the graves was all the family had when they started their search. "I wanted my boys to know where their roots were," she said. "As you get older, you get to wondering more about your roots. Mark and his brother were named after their grandfather, but he died so young; Mark's father was only three years old." Mark Shook was born in Enid, Okla., but says he feels so strongly about the field in Central that he wants to be buried there. "If you walk back there, it's very peaceful," he said. "My family owned this land, and it means a lot with what we've been through. I loved my grandfather very dearly, and he never saw his father. I am supposed to be this spitting image of someone I've never seen. "You know how sometimes you think about where your home is? To me, at this point in my life, that's my home. Even though I've never lived in Baton Rouge." Sue Shook said her family plans to ensure its roots aren't forgotten again. "In December we plan to take our grandsons to see those graves," she said. "It's important that people realize it's important to us. I remember Arthur's stone says 'Gone but not forgotten.' I want people to know he's not forgotten."