‘Graveyard groomer’ works to put gloss back in gravestones

WAPAKONETA, Ohio (AP) — Armed with a rotating brush and a seven-part mortar mix for filling in cracks, John Walters resembles a dentist as he carefully chips away layers of unsightly scum and treats it to reveal the same white, polished marble that was once firmly planted into the ground to mark the passing of an Auglaize County settler from the mid-19th century.

Walters also uses a brace to correct its crooked lean, as if it were a stubborn tooth.

But with his frayed cut-off jeans, sleeveless shirt and scraggly beard, Walters looks more like an auto body shop repairman.

His job, as a self-employed “graveyard groomer,” is a little like both, he says. Like a dentist or shop repairman, Walters cleans and restores that which is often neglected and exposed to corrosive elements for years.

“A cemetery can be a community embarrassment,” the Connorsville, Ind., native said as he worked to restore a marble gravestone Wednesday afternoon at the Evergreen Cemetery on Silver Street, “or it can be a point of community pride.”

A city council committee proposed hiring Walters and one of his assistants, Kelly Luke, for a week to restore tombstones in the city’s oldest non-Catholic cemetery, where many of the community’s founders are buried. Work at the cemetery is costing about $3,000.

“Lots of the stones out there have been cracked or lost; we were told about 40 percent of the stones are missing, and there were several hundreds of people buried there,” said 4th Ward Councilor Rachel Barber.

Barber, who first arranged for Walters to teach at a workshop on grave restoration in May, said she believes the cemetery restorations are an important way to honor the community’s founders.

“I think it’s just an issue of respect,” Barber said. “There are people who have relatives there who have been saddened by the condition of the cemetery, and it’s incredibly amazing the difference between the before and after.”

Walters, who started his business 11 years ago after serving as the cemetery supervisor for the Fayette County Highway Department for five years, begins each cemetery project by assessing the priorities of a particular location.