Two recent comments by Geoff Souther were stunning in light of his background.

Souther, who spent parts of 45 years working at the New Hampshire State Hospital, only recently learned that the big white cross – the one clearly visible from Clinton Street, looking lonely and devoid of any purpose or context – marked one of the hospital’s two cemeteries.

Some of these forgotten former hospital residents have been resting at these burial grounds – on opposite sides of Clinton Street near Interstate 89’s Exit 2 – for 100 years.

Then Souther, who has lived in Concord for decades, added to this surprising revelation, saying that he’d never even noticed the 9-foot-tall structure until two years ago, when the New Hampshire Hospital Cemetery Committee he helped create began giving the burial site the attention it deserved.

In other words, a former psychiatric social worker, senior project manager and chief operating officer at the hospital who helped me piece together a local landmark’s history is relatively new to the information himself.

The cross stood guard over the dead, Souther drove by with the focus of a NASCAR driver, and that’s the way it went for decades.

“I’ve driven by it dozens of times, if not hundreds of times,” said Souther, who retired last year as the hospital’s COO after two years. “I didn’t have a clue.”

Souther was joined at the Monitor by local historian Jim Spain, and together the two walking encyclopedias helped me unravel the mystery of an object that can be seen with a quick side glance while driving past.

I’ve often wondered myself about that giant white cross, standing 150 yards off Clinton Street. That’s why I visited it, plus the other gravesite, which can’t be seen from the street.

From the north side of Clinton Street, the 130 flat-stone graves line up in three long rows, giving the illusion that the cross stands alone in a huge, nicely manicured patch of grass.

And in essence, it did for decades, since few knew what it was, who was there and why.

Souther and Spain were guarded early in our interview, worried my column would dwell too much on the negative, not enough on the positive.

Souther did not want to point fingers at anyone from the hospital’s history, saying the cemeteries merely slipped through the city’s cracks. Yet he also mixed his words with a touch of culpability, and he used the word disappointment to describe the scenario.

“The disappointment was that we hadn’t kept up with it, people in my profession,” Souther acknowledged. “But this is not about righting wrongs of the past. This about doing the right thing. I’m proud we took this on.”

The negative aspect here – decades of cemetery neglect – is a reflection of how society once viewed mentally ill people. The positive – the cemetery cleanup – is an attempt to erase the stigma and begin treating these people as, well, people.

State archivist Brian Burford showed me three tall, faded, hard-covered books, each labeled “Mortuary Record.” Burial listings stretched from 1926 to 1972. There are lot numbers and causes of death, including suicides by hanging and coronary thrombosis.

Other paperwork, written in 2010 by attorney Ronald Standler, whom I could not reach, speculated that the cemeteries were hard to see or hidden for a reason. He wondered why there was no clear path to each site, why there was no parking, why the markers were so far from the street, why there was no mention that the cemeteries were affiliated with the New Hampshire State Hospital.

Some patients had family, but mental illness was taboo then, so at times no one came for them after their deaths. For years, the cemeteries stood without regular upkeep.

Upright marble stones cracked from the elements. The granite flat stones, once parallel with the ground, faded beneath clovers, grass and dirt. As Souther said, “The ground had swallowed them.”

For decades, nothing connected the sites to the hospital. “Meadow Cemetery I” read one sign, still there, lying flat on the ground.

In his conclusion, in fact, Standler wrote, “One has the impression that this cemetery was intended to be forgotten, not visited.”

Jake Leon is the director of communications for the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency responsible for the two cemeteries. He had no idea why the two gravesites were created with poor markings at hard-to-see areas.

“I really don’t know about those decisions that were made before you and I were born,” Leon told me. “It’s tough to know what went into it, but we just wanted to make them as visible as we could so anyone who wanted to explore or find a loved one would have an avenue.”

That process actually began 15 years ago thanks to a restoration project led by volunteers, who rolled up their sleeves and got dirty to free some of the flat stones long covered with grass and dirt and weeds.

Two years ago, Ed Costa, the hospital’s new chaplain “took an interest beyond the current patients,” noted Souther, the chief operating officer at the time.

With Costa’s momentum-building idea to dignify the cemeteries, and following a call from someone looking for a loved one buried there, the New Hampshire Hospital Cemetery Commission was born.

So was a trend, a soul-searching vibe, fueled by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. Suddenly, the country had to look in the mirror. The reflection, we had to admit, wasn’t pretty, showing a culture that had successfully cast mentally ill people to the side of the road.

In this case, Clinton Street.

“This was not unique to New Hampshire,” Souther said. “This is about dignity and respect for people who came before us.”

Souther recruited Spain, whose Irish family came ashore here in the mid-19th century, and who says he’s “related to half of Concord.”

Spain was the perfect committee member, a historian willing to spend untold hours on the internet and in the state and city libraries.

Souther made sure he created a well-rounded committee, adding hospital administrators, mental illness advocates and members of the New Hampshire arm of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, better known as NAMI.

The cemeteries are still easy to miss, and that won’t change. But the markers – which don’t come close to covering all the space available – are upright, cleared off and readable. Some were replaced, good as new, meaning Blanche M. Robichaud, who died in 1976, looked terrific.

In the other cemetery, Nellie Reagan’s flat stone showed fresh-looking inscribed letters, despite the fact that she died in 1970. Also, on the left side of her rectangular stone sat a tiny transparent cross with rosary beads inside and a picture of a Pope-like figure in white on the outside.

Someone cares.

That cemetery was built first and is about 300 yards off Clinton Street, a 10-minute walk before the other big white cross and upright stones come into view. On the way, you pass a fence lined with tall trees, a barrier between the sad stories and the swimming pools in spacious backyards, part of an upper-middle-class neighborhood that seems a million miles from the people buried nearby.

Spain said illegible or damaged stones will still be replaced.

“Our objective is to continue,” he said. “The future looks bright.”

Both resting places now have people who care, after decades of abandonment. They both have granite tablets announcing that the spots are affiliated with “New Hampshire Hospital,” and that wasn’t the case before.

In a strange twist, the two big crosses, present for so long, one sometimes not noticed, the other impossible to see from the road, will be taken down in the coming months, replaced by granite monuments listing those buried there.

“You can’t assume everyone is Christian,” Souther said.

Then he laughed, amused about the big white cross he never saw until recently.

“It was in plain view,” Souther said. “Hidden in plain view.”

(Ray Duckler can be reached at 369-3304, rduckler@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @rayduckler.)

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