Community issues

Untold Stories: Illustrated Interview with Green Mount Cemetery’s Manager and Superintendent

By Gloria Mondo

Published on: December 31, 2022 6:00 AM EST

Green Mount Cemetery with Tammi Prysiazny and Shawn Ward
(Gloria Mondo for The Baltimore Banner)
Tammi, manager since 1997. “It’s a sacred place… Our mission is to take care of the deceased and their families. I’m on the [Maryland Cemetery and Cremation Association] board and Green Mount was looking for a new manager. So they asked if I’d be interested. When I came for my interview, I told them I could not work under [these] conditions. So I’ve been fixing this place ever since. Shawn and I are both fixers, we like to fix things.”

“The cemetery opened in 1838. “So we get a lot of people [who] want to know about their ancestors that were buried here. We’re trying to put together a decent database so that we can help them. Now we think [Green Mount is] in great shape. We take a lot of pride in that… This place is our legacy. We have more tourists here than families for burials, which is different from the cemetery I came from. When I left, [they] were doing 600 burials a year. Here we do maybe 15 a year. It’s great because we meet people from all over the world… the stories that they tell you!”

Shawn, superintendent since 2007. “I’m a farmer by trade. I have mechanic experience through the Navy, which [also] plays in here pretty good. It takes you a while to learn all the intricacies of repairing the headstones… you can destroy things, thinking you’re repairing [them, if you] use the wrong hardware products. We’ve straightened up 600 headstones. You don’t see headstones lying down or tilted or whatever… We both like things nice.”

“I like seeing that something’s accomplished at the end of the day. You know, a wall reappointed, a mausoleum cleaned up, a new door on it, painting something... Trying to preserve the history with a lot of these people is important. I [try] to I feel like I’ve learned about somebody that I never would have known nothing about and use that as a, you know, a rewarding experience…”

Gloria Mondo is an illustration student at Maryland Institute College of Art. To see more of her work visit her website or find her on Instagram @gloebugg.