About 55 members of the American Legion Family cleaned up Greenwood Cemetery during the annual community service project as part of the 107th national convention in Louisville.
After several decades without ownership and regular maintenance, Greenwood Cemetery in Louisville, Ky., had deteriorated to a state of despair and neglect.
Greenwood is home to nearly 900 veterans' graves, including more than 800 Black veterans. Due to double and triple burying the deceased, it is hard to determine the precise number of gravesites throughout the 22-acre site.
About 55 American Legion Family members spent the morning of Aug. 28 cleaning up the cemetery for the annual community service project as part of the 107th national convention in Louisville.
Past National Commander Denise Rohan was among the volunteers.
“My parents always raised us to give back to the communities,” she explained. “And as we come into each of our convention cities, we do like to leave the convention city location area better than what we found it.”
Other volunteers included Past National Commander Mike Helm and former American Legion Auxiliary President Lisa Williamson.
“It means so much that leadership is here showing our support for what The American Legion does,” Rohan said. “I could be sleeping late this morning. I could be doing absolutely nothing this morning. But this is part of our life. This is what we do. You take off your hat and go back to the work that you joined the American Legion Family for. We give back to our communities. We make sure that our youth understand that we have a responsibility to the country to give back in some way.”
Vietnam veteran Mike King, vice president of Greenwood Cemetery Community Partners, was among the first to get involved.
“When we first started, you could barely see into the cemetery,” said King, an Army veteran and member of American Legion Post 193 in Louisville. “The grass was 8 feet tall. There was a monster amount of debris and trash like refrigerators and tires. We've now got it to the point after about eight years of working on it that the trash is all gone. We have a lot of missing tombstones. We have a lot of holes to fill in. But my goal is to see like it was when I grew up. It was like a beautiful park.”
Every Saturday morning, King and other volunteers tend to the gravesites, mowing the grass, cutting down weeds, cleaning up around sunken graves, and more.
“We put some flags out for the veterans’ graves,” he said amid the buzz of grass trimmers and roar of lawnmowers. “We have a lot of people coming out, it's helping the neighborhood look better and people feel better about it.”
About 40% of the graves have sunken areas. In many cases these areas cover the entire grave and range from 6 inches to 24 inches deep. Several hundred headstones are displaced, knocked over, sunken, or even buried below the surface.
Among those buried at Greenwood is Sgt. Elijah Preston Marrs (1840-1910). During the Civil War, he led 26 enslaved men from Simpsonville to Louisville to join the Union Army. Marrs was an ordained Baptist minister, a school teacher and co-founded a college now known as Simmons University.
Every headstone, even those buried under vegetation, serves as a lasting tribute to a family.
Navy veteran Fred Chandler is on a quest to find his father’s grave, which is covered by the overgrown grass and weeds. Chandler was the bus driver who transported the American Legion volunteers to and from the cemetery.
“September will be his 100th birthday,” he said of Fred Chandler, Sr., who died in 1985. “I am determined that I'm going to find his grave by then. I searched for it on Father's Day and couldn't find it. I was kind of disheartened, but God brought me here today as the driver for these wonderful folks.”
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Chandler, who is the associate minister for a church across the street from the cemetery, has witnessed its rebirth.
“When people think of cemeteries, they think of the dead,” he said. “But what they're doing is bringing life to this cemetery right now. This could be the stroke of something that is alive and well. I'm just grateful for them.”
Holly Lewis, chair of The American Legion’s Media & Communications Commission, was among the volunteers. A veteran of 10 of these annual projects, she helped clear the tops of buried headstones so those mowing the area could do so safely.
“A lot of times we do cemeteries where we'll come in and help clean up some of the grounds, fix headstones, do whatever they need us to do,” explained Lewis, a member of Post 557 in Wintersville, Ohio. “It's an amazing, amazing thing to be able to give back to the community this way. it just fills my heart and serves my value of service to continue to serve and give back to the community.”
King expressed gratitude to the American Legion Family for their support.
“It means more than you'll ever imagine,” he said. “A lot of the guys here were in Vietnam. They had to fight racism in the military. Not only does the Legion come and help cut grass, but they're honoring all these veterans here and that shows they haven't been forgotten.”
- Convention