CHALMETTE, La. (AP) – College students on spring break joined hundreds of other volunteers at a cemetery dating to the Civil War, realigning hundreds of tilted headstones and scrubbing grime from thousands more. Some mark the graves of Union soldiers, others are from later eras.
College students from Ohio and Boy Scouts from Texas were among more than 800 people who pitched in to restore graves at Chalmette National Cemetery near New Orleans. Many of the roughly 8,000 headstones were green with algae, stained with soot from nearby refineries or askew in spongy Mississippi River soil. Flooding from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 also took its toll.
“We’re sitting on a delta,” said Ranger Kristy Wallisch, spokeswoman for Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, which includes the cemetery. “Just like our houses and other things, these headstones start to sink under their own weight, and tilt.”
More than a century and half since the end of the deadliest conflict on American soil, custodians of many such cemeteries are still doing battle in their upkeep.
The cemetery was created in 1864, when Union troops occupied New Orleans. Most of the Civil War-era soldiers died of such diseases as yellow fever, dysentery and pneumonia, said park curator Kathy Lang.