It's called a database, which could hardly sound more indifferent, or more inhuman. But go digging into the database of information on graves in the old and overgrown Springwood Burial Park in Roanoke, once Roanoke's premier, private all-black cemetary, and you'll find way more than hard, unfeeling statistics.

This is lives, stories, deep heartache and grief that speak to you from cells in a spreadsheet.

Roberta P. Turner, died in 1938. Her stone reads, "TILL WE MEET AGAIN." Two years later, her daughter Ruth, 17, died, too. Her stone reads, with solemn determination, "I WILL FOLLOW."

Levi Barber Jr. lived but 15 years, from August 26, 1923, to a week before Christmas in 1938. The pain his death inflicted is carved right into the stone in the words, "MOTHER'S DARLING."

All credit for this fascinating piece of history goes to Robert Bird, the retired Roanoke municpal auditor who with a troop of Boy Scouts has made clearing the graveyard a mission, along with documenting the identities of more than 1,000 people who found their last resting place there between 1937 and 1979.

Roanoke Times columnist Shanna Flowers wrote about the effort in a column in Tuesday's paper.

So far, Bird has identified the occupants of 289 graves, and catalogued all of the information he's gathered in a meticulous spreadsheet he graciously shared with me so I could put it online for people to search.

The first idea was that people who have relatives buried there might learn a little something, or just as good, share some information with Bird.

But anybody might find themselves pulled into this history in columns and rows.

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