SIUSLAW NEWS | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2018 | 7A
CEMETERY from page 1A
It makes her feel good. But
there’s also people who have
helped Emma as well.
“They help me with home-
work,” Emma said, a little shy
when it comes to talking about
needing help. That’s when Ni-
cole asked, “What kind of help
did we get after daddy had his
accident?”
Emma’s father had suffered a
traumatic brain injury a while
back, preventing him from go-
ing to work.
“He was driving to work early
in the morning, and there was a
tree that fell in the road, and he
hit it,” Emma said.
But after that, the community
stepped up to help.
“A bunch of people brought
us food,” she said. “They were
getting us food, and my family
from Washington came down
and helped us.”
“And what were you doing at
that time, were you playing bas-
ketball?” Nicole asked Emma.
Emma smiled when she re-
membered someone from her
preschool who would take her
to basketball practice.
Emma’s father is back to work
now, and it was time for the fam-
ily to start giving back. That’s
when they started looking at the
Kindness Club challenge.
“Most of the kids wanted to
do something for the humane
society,” Emma said, though the
Kindness Club has a variety of
projects, including creating care
packages for displaced families
and volunteering with local or-
ganizations to help beautify the
city. But Emma had something
else in mind.
“I had gone to cemeteries a
lot,” Emma said. “Some of them
are dirty and you couldn’t read
the headstones. So, when they
challenged us, I decided that I
wanted to clean the cemeteries.”
Nicole is active in genealog-
ical work, taking photographs
for the global website finda-
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“If someone is buried in this
area, the family can request a
photo of the headstone,” Nicole
explained. “And so, the kids go
with me a lot when we’re fulfill-
ing photo requests.”
The Meiers were also fans of
“The Good Cemeterian His-
torical Preservation Project,”
a group inspired by the work
of Floridian Andrew Lumish,
who decided to dedicate his life
to preserving the headstones
of veterans and sharing their
stories online. They began re-
searching the best ways to clean
headstones.
“Lots of research, because you
have to make sure you’re us-
ing the right stuff so you’re not
damaging the stones further,”
Nicole said.
“We started looking for some-
thing that would clean them
without hurting them,” Emma
said.
Nicole provided the name of
the “special cleaner,” D2 solu-
tion. While new headstones can
be cleaned simply with warm
water, she explained, “some
of those older historic stones
that have a lot of pollution and
molds and lichen and things like
that need to have D2.”
D2 is a specialized cleaning
solution that is often used to
clean historical monuments.
“Do you remember other
places they use D2?” Nicole
asked Emma.
“They used it to clean the
White House,” Emma answered.
“All the national monuments,”
Nicole added. “It’s preserving
history.”
Why is it important to pre-
serve history through monu-
ments like headstones?
“Because what if later it’s still
there, and other people see it,
and its way dirty, and you can’t
see it?” Emma said. “Maybe the
family can’t clean them, so I
wanted to.”
But D2 isn’t readily available
at the corner store; it needs to be
ordered and it’s expensive.
“Six gallons of D2 cost us al-
Emma got together her
friends and siblings and
their parents to help make
the headstones at Dead-
wood Pioneer Cemetery
easier to read, preserving
some of the area’s history
for local residents and
those seeking genealogical
information online.
most $500,” Nicole said. “Ship-
ping alone was $120. There’re
only a few places in the U.S. that
sell it. And then she had to order
brushes and gloves, scrapers and
spray bottles.”
One gallon of D2 is only
enough to clean five headstones,
so the family needed some
capital to finish the project.
For almost a year now, they’ve
been working to raise funds for
the project. It became a fam-
ily affair, with Nicole, Emma,
Emma’s brother Lincoln and
sister Hailey making cookies,
cupcakes and bracelets to raise
funds. They partnered with Tra-
cy Aaron at Sugar Mama’s Cup-
cakes and Goodies who baked
about 40 dozen cookies, along
with cupcakes and berry trifles
Emma had made herself. They
had two bake sales.
“And then we were invited to
go the Power of Florence to sell,”
Emma said. “And so we sold
treats and bracelets.”
They raised $633 in total.
Then, three weeks ago, they
headed to the Deadwood Cem-
etery.
“I had never been there be-
fore, so we went up there to see
what we were cleaning,” Emma
said. “There’s these weird de-
signs on the headstones, and
it’s by the woods, and I think it’s
cool.”
The Deadwood Cemetery,
located just off Highway 36
in Deadwood, has been going
through a revitalization as of
late, with grant funding helping
to beautify the area and restore
some of the older headstones
that had been lost with time.
“It’s a really nice area up there,
and they worked really hard to
clean it up and make it really
nice,” Nicole said.
The original plan was to clean
just 10 headstones, but by the
end of the day they completed
25.
“Some were really big, some
were really small,” Emma said,
but most of them were pretty
good size.
Emma, Nicole and Lincoln
got a posse of cleaners together
to help with the project.
“Deadwood coordinated a
cleanup day with our project, so
they had a few people from their
board come out and do mow-
ing and some edging and trim-
ming,” Nicole said.
“And Ms. Graham came,”
Emma added of the Kindness
Club leader.
“And Allison, Maron and
Liz Hughes,” Nicole said. “Ali-
son is a fifth-grader, Maron is
a first-grader, and Liz is their
mom.”
To clean a headstone, one
should spray it with D2, wait 15
minutes, and then apply the el-
bow grease.
“You start from the bottom
in circles, and then you go all
the way to the top,” Emma said.
“And you have to wash off your
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brush. I liked spraying the water
to wash off the D2.”
Along the way, the small crew
began learning about the differ-
ent people that rested in the hal-
lowed area.
“One of the person’s names
was Mabel Bacon, and that was
the first one I did, and it was my
favorite,” Emma said.
Nicole took the project as an
opportunity to learn more about
the cemetery’s inhabitants.
“We went back home after-
ward to research some of the
ones she really liked, and see
who they were,” she said.
They researched Harry Lester
Prindel, a World War I Marine
Corps veteran, and looked at
other names.
“We really wanted to find
more information on Mabel Ba-
con, but she was young when she
passed away,” Nicole said. “Not a
lot of records on that one.”
After they cleaned the 25
headstones, they could have
called it a day.
“But we still have a little D2
left that we want to go back out
and use,” Nicole said. “We want
to try and finish the rest of the
cemetery.”
Not all of the 300 headstones
in Deadwood need to be cleaned,
as some have been recently re-
stored and replaced and others
are recent burials that only need
a warm water cleaning.
“We’re kind of targeting the
older ones,” Nicole said. “I don’t
know how many more there
are.”
Looking at her daughter and
the work she accomplished, she
added, “We’re really proud of
Emma, and we want to support
her and help her in whatever
way she wants to give back to
the community.”
And thus far, the community
has been grateful for Emma’s
work.
“The Deadwood Pioneer
Cemetery Board of Trustees is
so thankful to you Emma, and
your mighty team for your hard
work and contributions to the
Deadwood Pioneer Cemetery,”
the board wrote for Deadwood’s
monthly newsletter, the Dead-
wood Ditto. “We are so proud of
these kids, and we’re thrilled to
have their help in restoring and
preserving these lovely stones
that represent our amazing an-
cestors and heritage. Outstand-
ing work, all!”
Emma and her family do not
plan on stopping with Dead-
wood. If they can raise enough
funds to finish that project, they
want to move on and restore all
of the historic cemeteries in the
area.
“We want to make sure we can
support her, fundraising howev-
er we can, or putting together
work crews to go out and do the
physical work,” Nicole said.
They’re waiting for the win-
ter to cycle through before they
begin hitting up the rest of the
headstones in the Siuslaw.
As to why Emma thinks tak-
ing on such a massive project is
important, the answer is pretty
simple.
“Maybe someone is related
them to them, and they’re trying
to find their gravestone, but no
one knows it there because it’s
covered in stuff,” Emma said.
“You have to make sure other
places are clean, so you can still
see them.”
To make donations or of-
fer support for the headstone
cleanup project, contact Kind-
ness Club coordinator Shannon
Graham at sgraham@siuslaw.
k12.or.us.