James Rouse thought of nearly everything for Columbia, except death

When James Rouse established Columbia in 1967, he envisioned “a garden for the growing of people,” focusing on making it a place where people wanted to live.

He neglected the reality that people also die; his plans left out a cemetery.

It wasn’t long before Columbia residents began wondering how they could be laid to eternal rest in their new home.

After noticing the oversight, members of the Columbia Cooperative Ministry, an interfaith and social ministry organization, took their concerns to Rouse in the late 1960s. But finding the land and opening a cemetery still took until 1989, when the Columbia Memorial Park opened off Clarksville Road.

Despite the wait, the cemetery spans 38 garden-like acres and is open to all who wish to be traditionally buried or cremated. There are traditional ground burials with flat grave markers instead of traditional upright tombstones, lawn crypts and a scattering garden for ashes.

There’s a burial garden for children and a chapel in the woods. Sections of the cemetery are designated for Jewish and Muslim community members. The cemetery’s serene landscape features large, lush trees, bushes and flowers.

On a recent October afternoon, fall leaves covered the ground as the wind whistled through the trees. The hum of insects lingered in the air, while graves bore signs of visits from loved ones, including pumpkins and other Halloween decorations.

It was Suzanne Waller, a member of the cooperative ministry and friend of Rouse’s, who first talked to the visionary developer about the need for a cemetery.

In an essay for the book “Creative Tension: Memories of Early Interfaith Experiences in Columbia, Maryland,” Waller wrote that when she informed Rouse that no one had given any thought to death, he “was startled and said, ‘You’re right!’”

So the ministry formed the Howard County Memorial Foundation in the early 1970s. The nonprofit explored ways to establish affordable funeral and burial practices that accommodated Columbia’s many religious faiths. The initiative eventually evolved into the Howard County Community Cemeteries Organization.

“Someone suggested the concept that it be a museum of Columbia’s people,” Marge Goethe, a Columbia resident and foundation member, wrote in her essay for “Creative Tension,” which was shared by the Columbia Maryland Archives.

Residents not only wanted a cemetery open to all faiths but also wanted the location to honor the existing wildlife, nature and vegetation.

In March 1978, the Howard Research and Development Corp. — a subsidiary of The Rouse Company — wrote to the community cemetery group that it had identified land available off Clarksville Pike for a cemetery.

“We are especially excited by your preliminary plans which hold out the potential for a cemetery set in a natural environment, which not only would preserve the important natural features of the land, but could also enhance the land for wildlife,” Michael D. Spear, executive vice president for Howard Research and Development, wrote in a March 8, 1978, letter from the Columbia Maryland Archives.

“Columbia is in real need of a cemetery, and we look forward to continuing our work with you in the months ahead,” Spear wrote.

Those “months ahead” turned into nearly 11 years.

The Howard Hughes Corp. sold the 10-acre site next to Clarksville Elementary School to the cemetery organization in 1988 for $200,000.

The Rouse Company chose Harvey Geller to develop Columbia Memorial Park. Geller, a Bethesda resident who owned and operated cemeteries in Virginia and Pennsylvania, saw Columbia’s as his opportunity to develop a cemetery “from scratch.”

It opened in 1989.

The late Gerald Brock, the vice president and senior development director for The Rouse Co., said to The Washington Post in December 1988 that “a cemetery completes the concept of the total city.”

Geller sold the cemetery in 1999 to Cornerstone Family Services, which later became StoneMor Partners L.P., a large-scale cemetery operator that became a publicly traded company in 2004. StoneMor became Everstory Partners in 2023 after the New York-based hedge fund Axar Capital Management took the company private in 2022.

Neither Everstory nor Columbia Memorial Park made anyone available to comment.

Many of the residents who were involved in seeing the cemetery built have since died. Others could not be reached or declined to comment.

Lynne Warshaw, who moved to Columbia in 1969 with her husband, told The Washington Post in 1988 that “having a cemetery here will round out the life cycle.”

Despite not having grown up in Howard County, the Warshaws felt Columbia “is our home now and, it sounds kind of morbid, but this is where we’d like to be buried,” Warshaw told The Post in December 1988.

Apparently, so did Rouse, who died in 1996.

He’s buried with his second wife, Patricia “Patty” Traugott Rouse, under a shady tree in a picturesque section of the cemetery. Their plot has a low-slung bench bearing the family name, accompanied by flat metal plaques.

Residents coming together on their shared need for a cemetery and eventually accomplishing that goal “goes to the whole concept of Columbia,” said Erin Berry, archivist for the Columbia Maryland Archives.

“It really speaks to how diverse it was here, how inclusive, and how they found that need,” Berry said. “They needed an inclusive place to bury their dead because they weren’t going to find that anywhere else.”