Service Day is a day in which students and staff get to play a role in helping their community, and it’s just around the corner. One service day project that students will be able to participate in is history teacher Chris Lindley’s cemetery mapping project. Lindley and his group will investigate tombstones and, to the best of their ability, accurately mark where the ancestors of the community are buried.
“The students and I will be engaged in getting as much information from a stone as we can and putting this onto a map so we can determine where people are buried to the best of our ability,” said Lindley.
Lindley has always been curious about where local historical figures and ancestors have been buried. However, he has always been unsure of their resting place due to the fact that the previous cemetery map was ruined in a house fire in the 1950s. It has always been a goal of his to restore the plat map for the sake of the community. The cemetery plating service day project will not only help present day community members in discovering the burial site of their ancestors, but also bring respect to the ancestors whose burial sites were never taken care of.
“I feel this is valuable as helping to preserve and interpret an aspect of our local heritage, as a partnership between students and a local civic organization and as an experience for our students to realize their own value and place in the community,” said Lindley.
Story by Jace Ingle
