Students Clean Cemetery Headstones
Times Picayune  03-24-1996

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The Chalmette National Cemetery got a facelift March 16 when 60 New Orleans
area youths washed headstones in the 17.5-acre historical site.

To earn student service hours, members of the Youth Program of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints packed a picnic lunch and came to the
cemetery armed with buckets and scrub brushes.

The National Park Service, which has been responsible for the cemetery's
operation since 1939, supplied special soap that would not harm the granite
and marble headstones.

It was not an easy job. The oldest below-ground cemetery in the New Orleans
area, the Chalmette National Cemetery contains more than 15,000 graves, 12,000
of which have headstones.

"We obviously won't finish today," Jeff Weber said as he surveyed the
gravemarkers, "but we'll come back whenever we can to do what we can."

Weber, a Kenner resident, is a leader in one of the church's organizations for
youths 11-18.

Megan Garcia, 12, a student at Haynes Middle School in Metairie, said that
cleaning the headstones was "cool."

"But is was also a little sad. We found the grave of a baby who was born in
1892 and died in 1893," she said. "It was only 1 year old."

Megan said she also found it interesting that the graves were segregated -
white soldiers in one area, black in another.

Paul Gruwell, 15, a Brother Martin High School student, said he most enjoyed
reading the tombstones he was cleaning.

"I liked looking at the names and dates and which wars they fought in," he
said. "One of the park rangers pointed out the grave of a woman who had
dressed as a man to get in the army," he said.

While most headstones give the names, dates and home states of the soldiers,
some reveal small bits of personal information.

Kim Coast, acting manager of the Chalmette National Cemetery, said the youth
groups did a great job. They clean a significant number of stones that needed
cleaning, she said.

"They were a wonderful group of kids, well-behaved, and they took satisfaction
in the work they were doing. They were really interested in the history of the
park and they asked a lot of questions about the people buried here," she
said.

Located on the site of the Battle of New Orleans, the cemetery was established
in 1864 by the U.S. government as a burial place for Union soldiers and some
family members who died in Louisiana hospitals during the Civil War. But
veterans of other wars have been added, and the cemetery reached its capacity
in 1945.

There's still an occasional funeral for veterans who have reservations or for
widows of veterans already interred, and Coast said the government sometimes
allows children under 18 who die to be buried in the cemetery with their
veteran fathers.

Because of its rich history, the park encourages school field trips.

"What better place to learn about the war than the place in which it was
actually fought," Coast said.

The park also allows local walkers and joggers to use the facility during park
hours, Monday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For information, call 589-4430.