Volunteering for the fallen

AFTON - The graves located in Greenlawn Cemetery are being maintained by a dedicated group of volunteers.

To prepare Greenlawn for spring, a community cleanup day was arranged for Saturday, April 13, with volunteers from Afton arriving to help perform maintenance in the park. Work ranged from picking up fallen branches, trimming shrubbery and hauling debris.

Volunteers of all ages arrived early in the morning to sweep through 15 acres of the cemetery, honoring the history of the cemetery and over 4,250 burials since the first in 1851.

The city council representative appointed to the cemetery board of Afton is Kristie Nixon, who was one of the major organizers for the event. She helped organize the volunteer work for those who showed up for the cleanup day.

“The cleanup day was really, it’s spring, let’s get this cemetery cleaned up,” she said. “Limbs, brushes, things that blow through there all winter, the trash, we get all of that cleaned up.”

In previous years, the cemetery was maintained by a dedicated caretaker, who helped maintain the cemetery along with marking and digging graves. This was a paid position appointed by the city of Afton.

Greenlawn has been without an appointed caretaker for two years when the previous groundskeeper retired. Since then, maintaining the cemetery has been left to community volunteers and temporary solutions, such as managing grave digging and lawn mowing through contracted businesses.

“When you go from a regular caretaker that is there every day, to not, there are some things that get forgotten or out of hand sometimes,” Nixon said.

One solution the cemetery board made to account for a missing position was to remove some of the planted decorations that families and community members had made for personally important graves.

These planted decorations include miniature gardens and flowering bushes with pennies and irises. One of the roles for groundskeeping was to make sure these gardens were maintained and not bleeding out to surrounding graves. When the city of Afton had a dedicated caretaker, maintenance for these flowers would take a week.

The maintenance for these smaller decorations was unable to be completed with a missing position. With help from the community, these decorations were able to remain and are maintained by community volunteers.

Volunteer work for the cemetery also occurs during Memorial Day, where the community builds American flags for graves to honor veterans’ service to their country. Events such as the cleanup day and Memorial Day help bring out members of the community who are willing to help and give respect to the cemetery.

One major part of maintaining Greenlawn Cemetery is Rob Hull and his company, Hull Monument Service. The company has worked with the Afton community to help restore and clean headstones and monuments in the cemetery. Him and his family were a few of the volunteers who helped during the community cleanup day.

The company has done complimentary maintenance for headstones in the park for veterans, as well as being the primary place to go for headstone cleaning and maintenance. Hull Monument also works in cemeteries outside of Greenlawn as a figurehead for the community.

A clean and well-maintained gravesite is a vital part to respecting and remembering loved ones and ancestors, which makes the maintenance and cleaning all the more valuable for the community.

Nixon was proud of the volunteer turnout for the cleanup day. “It was great to have a lot of volunteers to help us spruce the cemetery up and keep it maintained,” she said.