The "I Don't Know How I Could Have Missed It!"

It was an ordinary day.  Walking through one of the smallest cemeteries I have ever visited.  The cemetery was about two city blocks from my home at Woodcrest Villas.  I only noticed it a day or two ago when my wife and I were returning from the grocery store.  Directly across from Woodcrest Villas on the Harrisburg Pike is a large health campus where a few of my doctors have their offices.  Between the health campus and the highway sits a very small cemetery.  There can't be more than a couple of dozen small tombstones that I had never noticed before, since they sat behind a few shrubs along a busy highway.  I recently decided I had to take a look at the tombstones and see if they might carry the names of anyone we might have known from the past.  Our daughter-in-law's mother researches historical tombstones and cemeteries from the past and I thought she might be interested in the small cemetery.  Grabbed my camera and within five minutes I was standing in front of a dozen or so tombstones that carried the names and dates of residents of Lancaster from perhaps a hundred or so years ago.  A few of the tombstones have deteriorated from years of winter weather, but a few were easy to read.   As I was viewing the stones a custodian of the health campus pulled up on his lawn mower to see what I was doing.  I told him I wanted to take a few photos of the tombstones to share with other people.  Put his mower in gear, waved good-bye and continued with his mowing.  The majority of the stones were very hard to read with a half dozen or so not carrying any message on them.  I did find quite a few flags that were attached to metal military signs telling what war or battle the person had served in with the date.  One tombstone had the name "William Kinnersley" on the top of the small stone with his dates telling that he was born on February 24, 1865 and died 15 days later.  One small metal plaque that was not attached to a tombstone stood planted in the ground with the name of Richard Adair Starr whose birth and death dates were 5/4/36-1/31/95.  You could tell it was a recent addition to the cemetery.  Some stones that were hard to read I tried to read with my fingers, but the letters were too hard to decipher.  As I stood in front of the stones and plaques, I wondered once again how I had never noticed them before now.  Perhaps there are many others who have never noticed the small cemetery also.  I finished taking my photographs and after a brief prayer, departed the cemetery.  I will definitely never miss it again and perhaps after reading my story today you will remember to look for the cemetery if you happen to travel near Woodcrest Villas.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.