Friends of Forest Hill Cemetery

•  The Derry Heritage Commission and especially Richard Holmes for underwriting this project.               
• To Mike Fowler, Alan Cote and their cemetery staff who did a great job of making sure our area was nicely mowed & trimmed and for the "painting" - you guys know what I mean <grin>.  Your help was appreciated!!    
• Thank you to Benson's Lumber in Derry for donating the sand and gravel we needed for this project.                              
• Don Kirkland who was my Co-Chair and without whose help I could not have done this so successfully. He was a great help to me!
• Marissa from the Derry TV station who lugged her camera around all day.  Thank you to Barb Ellingwood for sending her!
• Pinkerton Academy Air Force Junior ROTC who put up the stakes and signs then efficiently took care of the parking for us.

After a week of rain, the clouds parted on Saturday, June 13, 2009 and we had a beautiful sunny day for the workshop.                                  

The next two photos are of  Jonathan greeting the attendees.

Next we took a stroll through the historic area looking at & evaluating various stones.  Here Jon with town historian, Richard Holmes,  show the group the only "Zinker" in Forest Hill Cemetery.  We then had a discussion about zinc 'stones'.  Overheard were "Gee, I wish they made them today as I'd like one for myself".  I agree!!  You can see others that I have photographed in other cemeteries in my Virtual Cemetery on Find A Grave.

Below,  Jonathan is scraping the lichen from a stone using a PLASTIC (never use metal) scraper.  Then he cleans the gravestone using D2 & water with a soft kitchen brush.

Now it's time for the group to get to work.  Oh? You didn't know this was a hands-on affair?  They did seem to enjoy it so much so that we nearly didn't get to straighten or restore other stones! 

 Not many before cleaning photos were taken as we didn't know exactly where we'd be working but you can see what a terrific job D2 does on removing lichen on the stone of Randal Alexander.  Here are some of the supplies that Jonathan used.  Photo taken by Ken Tarbox and used with his permission