College Cemeteries Offer Grads a Final Homecoming

You can call it a permanent homecoming of sorts. Dozens of alumni of Mount St. Mary’s College have decided to spend eternity buried at their alma mater.

The Roman Catholic college in northern Frederick County has sold more than 100 of the 260 plots in a cemetery it opened nearly two years ago.

At least 42 of the buyers were alumni, such as George Green, class of ‘51, a retired IBM executive living in Frederick, 25 miles south of St. Mary’s.

“The Mount’s been my mountain home for many years, and it’s the only place I considered for my burial,” Green said. He buried his wife there in 1995, two months after they chose their plots in the foothills of the Catoctin Mountains.

Other colleges have cemeteries but few bury alums, according to Becky Haffa of the National Funeral Directors Assn. Most are reserved for school founders, administrators or celebrated professors.

Mount St. Mary’s opened its cemetery after nearby St. Anthony’s Church said it could no longer accept Mount graduates in its crowded graveyard, according to George Gelles, the college’s director of auxiliary services. He said the college takes St. Anthony parishioners at its cemetery, which is otherwise restricted to Mount alumni, employees and their families.

Plots start at $500 and can cost up to $2,000, depending on location and view. Gelles said the prices were in line with cemeteries in the area.

“It makes sense to return to where you started your professional life,” Gelles said. “Recent graduates move all over the country, and even people from the classes in the ‘50s and ‘60s have moved quite a bit in their lifetimes. They don’t want to end up in one of those gigantic cemeteries alongside some highway.”

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Gelles said two colleges have contacted him for advice in creating campus cemeteries. Some schools, including Bethany College in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, are considering expanding existing burial grounds to meet increased demand.

“Colleges, certainly Bethany, are in a position to assist families with inns, caterers, chapels, musicians, even chaplains. A one-stop service with people you know and probably at a price that’s right,” said Robert A. Sandercox, special consultant to the college president. “Cemeteries are a natural follow-up.”