On a beautiful Saturday morning, 36 volunteers gathered at Manitowoc’s Evergreen Cemetery, where they cleaned over 75 gravestones, most of which belonged to Civil War veterans.
More stones were cleaned, as they belonged to people who appeared to be family members.
The mood of the volunteers was that of honor, as they learned about the variety of stones used back in the early 1900s, and about the men who served during the Civil War.
One of those men wasn’t even yet a man.
Edward George Hill was 16 years old when he died in battle.
His stone was cleaned by Tony Reinke.
He told us that he just happened to find the stone and started scrubbing.
“So I started working on it, and after 45 minutes, they took a picture of it and I got to find out who it was,” he said. “It was amazing because then you knew who you were doing, and it made you want to scrub faster, scrub harder, and make it look great for any descendants.”
Tony said he was honored to have come out to help.
“The people that came out here to help…the people I got to meet, Billy, Logan, Ted, it was great,” he said. “The history of finding out who this young man was was awesome.”
Another man who showed up was the great-great-great-grandson of Leonard Benkelman, who we ran a story on over the weekend.
He was overcome with emotion as well as he cleaned PVT Benkleman’s marker.
Coffee was donated by Jenn’s Java for the volunteers, and Shooter Malone’s donated burgers as well.
Dan Reinke, the organizer of the cleanup effort, said that over the last two years, 100 civil war veteran gravestones were cleaned out of the 231 total at the Manitowoc Cemetery.
