Farm bill provision includes effort to return family cemetery

The Rev. Jim Mullins wants to be buried in his family's cemetery. The problem is, right now that cemetery, the Mullins-Sturgill Cemetery in Pound, Va., is on federal land in the Thomas Jefferson National Forest, and Mullins, a Korean War veteran, wants the security that comes with knowing he’ll be laid to rest on family land. An inclusion to the federal farm bill would convey the seven-tenths of an acre and the access road from the U.S. Forest Service to Mullins and the Sturgill Cemetery Association. U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-9th, introduced the bill earlier this year and it was added to the farm bill. The family has had access to the land and paid a yearly fee to keep a special-use permit for the land, but Mullins and other family members want to own the land free and clear. U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both Democrats, have added their signatures, along with Griffith's, to a letter asking members of the Senate and House committees on agriculture to consider adding the conveyance to the farm bill conference report. The letter was sent last week. The farm bill conference committee met for the first time at the end of October and is working to stitch together a bill to put on the president's desk by the end of the year. The cemetery is on the edge of the forest, off of state Route 671, said JoBeth Brown, public affairs specialist for the George Washington & Thomas Jefferson national forests. It was transferred to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service in 1983, she said, when it acquired more than 5,000 acres from the Army Corps of Engineers. The historic cemetery was inadvertently included in public land when the Pound Dam was built in the 1960s, according to the letter. "It's important for us to get this done because first of all, it should never have been given to the government," Mullins said, adding that the Forest Service hasn't kept up the property. "And we don't want to be buried on government land. The thing is, it's family." Under the bill drafted by Griffith, the cemetery association would pay a fair market value for the land, as determined by an appraisal approved by the secretary of agriculture and paid for by the association. Proceeds would be deposited into the federal treasury...more