Volunteers needed to help 'Honor and Restore'

HIBBING—A local veterans organization is in need of the public’s help to clean up the headstones of veterans buried at Maple Hill Cemetery in Hibbing.

A committee from Beyond the Yellow Ribbon-Hibbing/Chisholm has scheduled volunteer days, each with two shifts to choose from.

The first volunteer day is Tuesday, July 23. Volunteers can choose from from 10 a.m. to noon or from 1 to 3 p.m.

The second volunteer day is Monday, August 12. Shifts are from 2 to 4 p.m. or 5 to 7 p.m.

This spring Beyond the Yellow Ribbon began working with an organization called Perpetual Care of Minnesota to learn about the Veteran Administration rules required to follow to safely clean headstones, according to Beyond the Yellow Ribbon-Hibbing/Chisholm Secretary Chris Magnusson.

Since taking on the Honor and Restore cemetery project, Magnusson said Beyond the Yellow Ribbon volunteers have found a World War I veteran who was a “horseshoer,” multiple Purple Heart recipients and women nurses from the Army and Navy during World War I.

“But some of them were very hard to read and others were covered with mold,” Magnusson said, adding “And they deserve better.

Now that Beyond the Yellow Ribbon committee members have gone through the initial training, they are now ready to take teams of volunteers into the cemetery for Phase I of the Honor and Restore project.

Magnusson said in mid-May all of the veterans headstones at Maple Hill Cemetery were sprayed with

a product called “Wet and Forget,” which as its name applies you wet the stones down and forget about them.

“It works great as long as it doesn’t rain for 12 hours,” Magnusson added.

The task ahead involves doing some scrubbing with special order brushes and plain water, “to clean the grime and mold out of the engravings.”

“It takes a little bit of finesse so the wood handles do not scrape the headstone,” Magnusson said.

Magnusson said volunteers who are able to get down and the ground and get back up are more suitable for scrubbing, and those who aren’t able to can help out by spraying the water.

To volunteer sign up on the United Way volunteer portal—tinyurl.com/HibbingCemetery

Donations of clean spray bottles and water jugs, snacks and beverages to stay hydrated in the summer heat are needed. For more information or to donate, contact Magnusson at 219-969-7137 or email at btyrhc@gmail.com.

Future projects in the works

Another phase of Beyond the Yellow Ribbon-Hibbing/Chisholm Honor and Restore project involves lifting sunken foot stones and removing over growth over the stones.

“This project will take a little more muscle and we will need to do more training with Perpetual Care of Minnesota before we can start,” Magnusson noted.