S. Frontage burial site was built in early 1900s by Jonestown residents.

A cemetery that barely can be seen through brush and debris along South Frontage Road near Halls Ferry is pretty much all that’s left of the community 64-year-old Sherry Fisher once called home.

Now, after years of trying to maintain the century-old Tate Family Cemetery, she and others will see the burial ground returned to the respectful parcel of its years long ago.

A developer working on a hotel and restaurant next to the cemetery has offered a $30,000 facelift.

&#8220We allowed them to go in and take down trees, shrubbery, undergrowth and cut stumps and seed and sod,” said Paul Winfield, an attorney hired a year ago by descendants of the cemetery’s residents. &#8220We also gave them permission to move and put back headstones.”

In return for permission to work on the parcel, the cemetery association will receive perpetual care for the land.

The work will be performed by Tate Street Development, operated by developer Jimmy Hamilton, which is building between Frontage and Bazinsky roads.

&#8220If the adjacent property is kept up, it’s leverage for their property,” Winfield said.

Work on the cemetery built in the early 1900s by residents of the Jonestown community began this week.

Fisher was reared there, in a blue house next to what’s now a Greyhound bus station at South Frontage and Halls Ferry. Her mother and her aunt – the late Academy Award-winning screen star Beah Richards – also grew up in that house.

When she closes her eyes, Fisher said, she can see Jonestown as she remembers it – faces of neighbors both black and white, trees she climbed, old churches and houses. Today, it’s The Home Depot and Walgreen’s.

At the neighborhood cemetery, slightly damaged by neglect and weather, headstones are scattered across freshly graded dirt. Others are hidden by brush in a wooded area. Some have not held up well over the years.

&#8220There was a fear that somehow doing the construction would damage it,” said Bill Bost, lawyer for Tate Street Development,. &#8220But, it’s been impacted by a lot of things. If there’s enough rain, a lot of water goes through there. It’s been going on for decades.”

Winfield believes the restoration will allow family members to walk into the almost bowl-shaped area to visit graves. A fence will most likely be placed around the perimeter, Bost added.

&#8220It will enhance the aesthetics of it,” Winfield said.

Though some remains were reinterred when Interstate 20 and its frontage roads were built in the early 1970s, about 60 grave sites remain – some are Fisher’s relatives.

Fisher, a retired school teacher, and a friend, tried to maintain the cemetery. She asked families of those buried there to help, but it didn’t help.

But she’s not bitter.

&#8220I want to see the cemetery kept up,” she said. &#8220If someone is going to preserve it – I’m all for it. I support it 100 percent.”