ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996               TAG: 9601300047
SECTION: HOMES                    PAGE: D-1  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: WINCHESTER (AP)
SOURCE: LAURA HUTCHISON GRANT THE WINCHESTER STAR 

A REAL QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD

The Carmicals live close to their work.

It used to be that people thought the couple strange, Donnia Carmical said recently, but now they're just sort of used to it.

Donnia, 36, and her husband, Robert, 30, are both funeral directors - Donnia for Omps Funeral Home in Winchester; Robert for Money and King Funeral Home in Vienna.

The Carmicals and their gray and white cat, Trouble, live in the 93-year-old stone gatehouse at Winchester's Mount Hebron Cemetery, which forms an arch over the cemetery's East Lane entrance.

The couple met in mortuary school in Indiana, Donnia Carmical said. They will have been married four years in April.

``My husband is from Kentucky, and I'm from Tennessee. He got an apprenticeship in Virginia after we finished mortuary school, and that's how we wound up here.''

The Carmicals were renting a small apartment in the area when Donnia discovered the gatehouse.

``I knew this building had been the superintendent of the cemetery's home, and had been rented out a couple of times after that,'' she said. ``A man who worked for us was living here and I was intrigued.''

Donnia looked at the gatehouse and brought her husband to look at it.

``It was very neglected when we first looked at it,'' she said. ``That was a real shame because this house is such a treasure.''

The Carmicals rent the gatehouse from the Mount Hebron Cemetery Board, and have lived there for the past two years.

A cemetery spokeswoman said the gatehouse has been rented out as a residence for about five years.

The Carmicals put wallpaper liner up on all the walls, and repainted some lemon-yellow and rust-colored walls a Dover white.

They added ceiling fans in some rooms, blinds and curtains on the windows, and area rugs.

A small foyer leads left to a dining room, right into a half bath with a curving exterior wall, or straight ahead into a living room with a nonworking fireplace.

A curving staircase leads to a second floor and five rooms, which the Carmicals use as a lounge, guest room, junk room, laundry room, and master bedroom. There also is a full bath upstairs.

The master bedroom is in the arch, so cemetery visitors driving under the arch drive directly under the Carmicals' bedroom.

One of Donnia Carmical's favorite parts of the house is one the couple does not use - the tower.

Halfway up the tower is a huge room, with cracked walls and a hole in the wall for a wood stove. There are tall, thin arched windows around the room.

Up a narrow, dark staircase is the top floor of the tower, which is covered in dark wooden strips laid side-by-side on the floor, the walls, and the ceilings.

``This is the best view I've seen of Winchester,'' Donnia Carmical said, standing tiptoe on a raised platform and raising a shade. On an early January day, the snow-covered city stretched out for miles beneath her window.

``This tower is great, but there are squirrels that get in up here, and we've had problems with elm bugs and ladybugs - and bats. We've had three bats in here this year alone.''

But neither the bats nor the substantial cost of heating and cooling the house will force the Carmicals from their home, Donnia Carmical said.

``I've always wanted to live in a building like this. In the summertime, when I have the door open, people think I'm part of the cemetery personnel. I've given impromptu tours to people who've stuck their heads in and want to see the place. The house is historic and old and I got to fix it up.

``People used to think it was strange- funeral directors living in the cemetery, but it's right up my alley.''

``

''

LENGTH: Medium:   81 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. 1. LIFE IN A CEMETERY: Donnia and Robert Carmical 
          call it home. 2. Donnia Carmical and Trouble enjoy the view from the
          93-year-old stone gatehouse at Winchester's Mount Hebron Cemetery. 
          The Carmicals, who have made some repairs, have lived in the house 
          for two years. color.