Where’s Harvey Milk? Over by J. Edgar Hoover : Congressional Cemetery is common denominator for national notables.

It has been 13 1/2 years since San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk was gunned down, along with Mayor George Moscone, in San Francisco City Hall.

But Milk’s remains have yet to find a final resting place, and for the last six years the ashes of the first avowed homosexual elected to office in California have sat in an urn in a corner of a vault in the office of the Congressional Cemetery here.

The Never Forget Foundation, an organization that erects cemetery monuments to homosexual leaders, “purchased the large burial plot and left money for Milk’s inurnment in this historic cemetery, but the group has yet to agree on a fitting monument,” explained John S. Hanley, 55, cemetery administrator.

“So, my instructions are to keep the remains where they are until I hear from the foundation.” The last time he was contacted, he said, was two years ago.

“At that time I was told they were in no hurry to remove Harvey Milk’s ashes from my vault, that they were trying to come up with an appropriate monument fitting a person of his renown,” Hanley recalled.

There are more than 75,000 burial plots in the 35-acre cemetery at 1801 E St. SE, on a rise above the Anacostia River, four blocks from JFK Stadium, 20 blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

Established in 1807, the oldest burial ground in the federal district came by its name because it was a traditional burial place during its first half-century for members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate who died in office. Some 78 representatives and 19 senators are buried here.

The cemetery is the final resting place of many of America’s Founding Fathers and of many leading national figures.

Elbridge Gerry is here. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Massachusetts governor, congressman and vice president, his name was the basis for the word “gerrymander”--the redrawing of political districts to favor one party. While he was governor, one district was drawn in the shape of a salamander.

Famed Civil War photographer Mathew B. Brady is here, as is Belva A. Lockwood, the first woman nominated for president in 1884 by the National Equal Rights Party. Women couldn’t vote, but 4,000 men voted for her.

On March 6, the 60th anniversary of the death of John Philip Sousa, some 200 bandmasters and the U.S. Marine Corps band saluted the March King at his tomb in the Congressional Cemetery.

The remains of David Herold, hanged for his part in President Lincoln’s assassination conspiracy, are here, as are more than 50 other men and women connected with Old Abe’s death, including reporters, detectives, morticians, the doctor who cared for Lincoln during his last hours and other conspirators.

Also here: 10 mayors of Washington, several governors, librarians of Congress, Cabinet members, seven Civil War generals and 48 Indian chiefs.

Architect Benjamin Latrobe designed 130 sandstone cenotaphs, or empty tombs, during the first half of the 1800s in memory of congressmen who were buried elsewhere.

Among those interred at the cemetery are J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI and his devoted friend and FBI associate, Clyde Tolson, who is buried near him.

Called America’s first national cemetery, the Congressional Cemetery has always been privately owned by Christ Episcopal Church. But the church fell on hard times and was unable to care for the burial grounds. The cemetery was overgrown with weeds, choked with litter and became a home for packs of wild dogs. Monuments were overturned and crumbling. The American Cemetery, monthly magazine of the cemetery industry, in 1978 called the graveyard “a national disgrace.”

That was the year Christ Episcopal Church gave the nonprofit, nondenominational Assn. for Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery a 99-year lease to operate the grounds.

Congress provided $327,000 from 1982 to 1990 to help restore the cemetery. The 720 members of the cemetery association each pay $100 a year to maintain the graveyard. Money is raised in part by selling “I Dig Congressional Cemetery” T-shirts.

Only 350 sites are left in the cemetery, and in recent years gays from all over the nation have bought half of the available sites, said Hanley, explaining:

“The gay community is especially interested in history and the arts. They have come to look at Congressional Cemetery as a chance to be interred surrounded by founders of the Republic and many well-known historic notables. That’s why Harvey Milk and Leonard Matlovich are here.”

Matlovich, who died in Hollywood at age 44, was given a purple heart after stepping on a Viet Cong land mine and a bronze star for killing two Viet Cong guerrillas. He became a symbol for the gay community throughout America in 1975 when, while in the Air Force, he wrote a letter to his commanding officer confessing his homosexuality, resulting in his discharge.

He died of AIDS on June 22, 1988. There are two pink triangles on his monument, which he designed. Symbolic of the gay rights struggle, the triangles were used by Nazis during World War II to identify homosexuals in concentration camps.