Good “Cemeterians” Restore Veterans’ Graves

Laurel Manning and Marilyn Johnson have known each other since their years showing horses growing up here in Portland.  They also both share a passion for local history and preserving and sharing it with others.  That history includes the often overlooked and neglected history of the Portland Cemetery. 

That passion led Manning to volunteering with the Ionia County Genealogical Society to compile a comprehensive listing of graves in Portland.  Later, she began uploading Portland Cemetery data on Find a Grave, a crowdsourced genealogical research website that helps people find graves of their ancestors. That project involved physically visiting and photographing graves to upload to the database for use by people looking for information on their forebears.

That’s an aim shared by Johnson.  Despite living in Tennessee for many years, only moving back to Portland earlier this summer, she has been active in sharing Portland history online on the Portland Michigan History Facebook page.  Now that Johnson is living locally, the two longtime friends have reconnected and are again working together.  “I like dead people,” Manning jokes.  “They don’t talk back,” Johnson jumps in to give the punch line.    

In working on the Find a Grave documentation, Manning realized that many of the oldest graves were in poor condition and nearly illegible as a result.  At first she would just brush off the accumulated gunk with a brush to try to get a more legible photo.  Eventually, after a bit of research, she found that there is a specialist cleaner called D/2 designed especially to clean and restore delicate historic headstones.  This product is used by government agencies like the National Park Service and Veterans Administration in maintaining historical and national cemeteries like Arlington National Cemetery.

“A lot of stones are abandoned,” she says, “there is no family [to ask for permission].”  Most graves are owned privately requiring permission to clean them, however for veterans with the standard issue white marble headstones, the monument remains property of the federal government.  Since these graves do not require permission for cleaning, Manning decided to start the project there.

Doing so, has already uncovered some unexpected history. A few years back, they uncovered the grave of 1st Lt. Edwin Goodrich, a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient.  During a battle in Cedar Creek, Virginia in November 1864, Goodrich, a cavalry officer, returned under enemy fire to rescue a sergeant who had been trapped under his fallen horse as his unit was falling back.  Goodrich died in Chicago in 1910.  It was thought he was buried their until his headstone was discovered in the Portland Cemetery, apparently having been interred there due to family who lived here.  The discovery led to a replaced grave marker and a historical marker placed near the entrance to the cemetery.

“It takes a good deal of elbow grease,” Manning says as she demonstrates the technique on a grave of Phillip Neitz, another Civil War veteran, who was eventually completely blinded due to injuries sustained during the war.  The process of cleaning starts with a plastic putty knife to remove any loose lichen or moss.  Once that is done, she wets the stone with water and moves on to scrubbing with a stiff natural or plastic bristle brush.  From there the stone is sprayed with D/2 cleaner and scrubbed again.  Then it is rinsed and scrubbed some more.  Lastly, Manning reapplies a layer of D/2.  The treatment will continue to work over the coming months as it sits on the surface of the stone, dissolving dirt, lichen, and pollutants allowing them to wash away when it rains.  

VFW Post 4090 donated funding for an initial stock of the D/2 cleaner and Manning says that the American Legion Post 129 has also pledged funds to purchase more cleaning materials.  In the future, Manning and Johnson would like to organize a community wide cemetery cleaning day.  In the meantime, Manning and Johnson will continue cleaning graves as funding, good weather, and a ready supply of elbow grease are available.