SHORT TAKES : Seals Restoring Slave Cemetery

HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. —  When country music singer Dan Seals and his wife bought property that included a slave cemetery, help came pouring in from those who wanted to clean it up.

“It just evolved into a big thing around those people who were directly involved--us because we live there and the descendants of people that were buried there,” Seals said.

Seals and his wife, Andi, learned that the cemetery on their land near Nashville once served as the graveyard for slaves at the Rock Castle plantation. Members of two nearby black churches pitched in to restore it.

“They started giving their time and effort and flowers and trees,” Seals said.

Seals, a member of the pop group England Dan and John Ford Coley in the 1970s, recently switched over to country-style music. He performed last month at a rally in Bulgaria, before the Eastern Euopean’s country’s first free election in 48 years.