By teaching young people how to clean grave markers, a new student program with the Oak Hill Cemetery Committee and Watkins Museum of History aims to show participants that cemeteries aren’t creepy or sad. They’re vital links to community history and heritage.
Shannon Hodges, who handles youth and family education at the Watkins, said she’s never found cemeteries like Oak Hill to be dismal. They’ve actually got a lot in common with history museums, she said.
“Cemeteries like Oak Hill were designed for people to spend time in. They were designed for the living as much as for the dead,” Hodges said.
She formed a community-based group called Friends of Oak Hill Cemetery in 2017, which became a nonprofit and dissolved into the Douglas County Historical Society in 2022. The Watkins is also managed by the historical society.
Don’t miss a beat … Click here to sign up for our email newsletters
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
Leslie Beesley joined the group in its early years and is a board member on the committee. She said the group has hosted fall and spring clean-up days at the cemetery, promoted community education with tours and blogs, and collaborated with the city on upkeep strategies, like best mowing practices.
Please support
The Lawrence Times!
Subscribe here.
One of their most popular efforts is marker cleanings, but they’ve been on hiatus due to the committee’s capacity. Thus, the idea for the Oak Hill Cemetery Committee Student Program was born.
For Beesley and Hodges, it’s the perfect way to make sure the cemetery receives the continual upkeep it needs, while connecting younger Lawrence generations to the stories of those who came before them.
“It’s a history of our people, a history of our community,” Beesley said.
The Watkins landed a National Trust for Historic Preservation of $3,155 to pilot the program. Hodges hopes to send out at least one group directed by a teacher, youth group leaders, scout parent or similar figure to the cemetery this fall, and two or three in the spring.
Selected groups will foreground their experience by reviewing a four-part lesson the city developed on Oak Hill in 2018. The series is designed to satisfy Kansas standard requirements for multiple age groups, and it covers topics about rural cemeteries, symbolism, Civil War veterans and the people in Oak Hill.
Then, they’ll get a 45-minute presentation covering the cemetery’s history, the importance of historic preservation and safety measures for cleaning. The next day, students will be let loose — after a second review of safety protocols — to begin cleaning the markers with the supervision of qualified professionals.
Cleaning the markers, however, isn’t an exercise in aesthetics.
“It’s nice to see a clean stone, but you’re actually preserving it by removing those things that compromise the stone over time,” Hodges said.
She said that lichen is one of the main organic materials they battle with their brushes and preservation-safe cleaners. Many older markers were made with marble, a soft, porous stone that lichen easily permeates. Over time, the organism eats at the rock and the history it contains.
Hodges created a post-visit worksheet for group leaders and students to reflect on the field work. It also encourages young people to research the headstone they cleaned and create a biographical sketch of the person resting here.
“My hope is that they will see that there are so many interesting stories there about people that we’ve never even heard of,” Hodges said.
Interested groups can reach out to Hodges at [email protected].
Sunday, Nov. 1 is the loose deadline to register groups for the fall, although the program is weather-dependent.
Adults curious about Oak Hill preservation can get involved with the committee. Learn more at this link.
If local news matters to you, please help us keep doing this work.
Don’t miss a beat — get the latest news from the Times delivered to your inbox:
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at [email protected].
Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.
Latest Lawrence news:
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
Nathan Kramer / Lawrence Times
