Dear Friends Interested in the Walter Pierce Cemeteries: Mark Mack, for seven years the steadfast leader of the Walter Pierce Park Archaeology Project, passed away this past weekend from injuries sustained in a car accident on his way home from work on Friday. Mark, who was only 50, was a professor of biological anthropology at Howard University and curator of its W. Montague Cobb Biological Anthropology Laboratory. He was the laboratory director of the landmark African Burial Ground Project in New York. Mark lived in Ft. Washington, Maryland. He is survived by his wife Cindy and two-year-old daughter Amira. He has a large extended family in both the D.C. area and Springfield, Ohio. The funeral service for Mark will be held Sunday, May 20, at Rankin Chapel at Howard University. The viewing will be from 1 to 2 p.m., with the service following immediately after. In the summer of 2005, many will remember our quickly called neighborhood meeting in Walter Pierce Park, where the city was planning to conduct a huge earth-moving project. Many of us shared a deep, uneasy feeling that the proposed project would disturb graves from a 19th Century African American cemetery and Quaker cemetery that once occupied the site. City officials were insistent that all the graves had been removed at various times over past hundred years. But, of course, they didn't know there were more than 8,428 burials there--a number that was later documented through the research of the Walter Pierce Park Archaeology Team. The city's intransigence in 2005 on its planned earth-moving project caused me to call the Howard University switchboard. I told the operator I was hoping to speak to someone in the anthropology department who could help me regarding an African American cemetery in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. Within a few seconds, I was talking to Mark Mack, who, without knowing me and without hesitation, said: "Of course I'm interested in helping." Those of us concerned about the graves at Walter Pierce had hit the jackpot: Mark had worked for more than a decade as laboratory director of the African Burial Ground project in New York. Beyond that, not only did Mark have the scientific expertise for this unique, uncharted venture at Walter Pierce Park, he had the stubborn, down-to-earth personality it would take to get such a job done. Mark believed deeply in the sanctity of the burial grounds at Walter Pierce. He some times described the project as a "rescue mission" and imparted that sense of responsibility to a remarkable stream of Howard students who came and went from the project over the years. We've lost an irreplaceable leader and trusted friend. I hope you'll say a prayer for Mark's family and cherish your memories of him, as I do. --Mary Belcher, Walter Pierce Park Archaeology Project