Pictorial guidebook helps SAL locate veterans' graves

Pictorial guidebook helps SAL locate veterans' graves

In Easton, Md., Sons of The American Legion (SAL) Squadron 70 has walked the cemeteries to track and care for veterans’ graves for decades. But with more than 1,600 veterans interred in local cemeteries — many whose graves were worn by time and the elements — the squadron needed a better method for finding each headstone.

Royce Ball, enhancing a longtime project of late Legionnaire and two-time post commander James Patrick Jr., created a map of one of the larger cemeteries. Produced as a pictorial guidebook for the SAL, the 100-page document charts Spring Hill Cemetery, which includes 552 veterans' graves. This winter, Ball will map Woodlawn Cemetery, which includes another 500 graves.

Using the pictorial guidebooks has reduced the time it takes to decorate graves with American flags from three days to one.

“It got the flags up faster so they could be up longer for the holidays,” Ball said. “The idea came from desperation actually. Some of the stones had been well weatherworn, moss was growing on them and everything.”

Before this project, Patrick had been a guiding force in getting flags placed on stones to honor veterans during the holidays. After his death, his daughter and wife kept on, with the SAL.

But as older guides grew outdated, a new version became necessary. Before a system of sectioning off the cemeteries, and then marking each by section, row and number from the left or right, the headstones could be as inaccurate as 10 away, Ball said. He got involved in the project through past SAL commanders Marion Gannon and Denny Clough.

The guidebook is dedicated to Patrick, Marion’s father and former Legion post commander William F. Gannon and Denny’s father and former Legion post commander George E. Clough.

Ball and a team of SAL members walked the cemeteries, section by section, marking each veteran, looking for each known name. Of the more than 500, they were only unable to locate three, he said.

Then Ball, a self-proclaimed “Mac guy,” drew the graphics on his computer.

The version for Woodlawn will be finished before Memorial Day 2016, Ball said.

If other SAL squadrons are interested in taking on a similar project, Ball advised they should have only one person writing down locations, and be organized about how others shout information to that person.

“Coordinate the effort from the start because everything you do from the beginning is going to domino to the end,” he said.

Marion and Ball, whose father Robert G. Ball served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, also runs Midshore Recovering Veterans Group.