26 April 2010

Dear Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery,

I am thrilled to report the enormous progress made at Spring Hill during Friday' work session. With sunny skies 17 sturdy volunteers gathered to tackle our assigned tasks of resetting stones, maintaining paths, progressing with the map work, targeted stone cleaning, weeding, and further removing of winter debris. Regional Parks supplied us with needed tools, welcome refreshments, and a dump truck. Sixteen of our stones have now been reset into their bases, including the very large Titus and Ward monuments.

Our most visible task of the day was the resetting of stones into their recently reset bases. Probably our most dramatic accomplishment was the resetting of the massive Titus stone, the second and third attachments on this email. This is the largest stone in the cemetery, and quite heavy. With Spring Hills' sensitive environment, we will not drive equipment onto the cemetery property. Fortunately, Henry was able to bring us a rolling mechanical winch, which as you can see from the pictures, was put to good use (THANKS, HENRY!). In addition to the main Titus stone, the crew (Brad, Bob, Henry, Jeremy, Dick, Jerry) was able to reset Mary Titus, Anna C McReynolds and her husband Jacob McReynolds, Joseph McReynolds, Samuel McReynolds and his wife Emma, DPV Ogan and his children Ada and Lewis, the large Ward monument, George W Titus, Keziah Finley, Mary Ford, and Mary Rogers. Daniel Crayne had been reset last month. We still have a few more stones to set, but the visual effect on the cemetery of having so many stones once again upright is dramatic.

I want to give an extra thanks to those of you who have been giving to the Spring Hill Restoration Fund over the years. We are fortunate to have tremendous support from the community with donated labor and materials for most of our activities. But the task of resetting the stones has required specialty materials we were unable to get donated. Your contributions to the restoration fund have been invaluable in allowing us to proceed.

It is hard to describe just how transforming our efforts have been. To give an idea, I have attached the fourth through 6th pictures. The fourth attachment shows the Ward monument and base as it was when we discovered it through the tangle of debris that had taken over the cemetery; the fifth attachment is of the large Ward stone in the process of being reset last Friday; and the sixth attachment, also taken Friday, shows the large reset Ward stone with the newly reset McReynolds and Ogan stones in the background. Note the "LAW" footstone in each picture for comparison. With the support of Sonoma County Regional Parks and the contributions of all our volunteers, the restoration project is showing clear results. I am so very proud of all of our collective efforts.

Happily, Paul and Pat Schoch joined us this month. Paul is tackling the crucial activity of creating an accurate map of the cemetery. Using coordinates volunteers have taken of objects in the cemetery, Paul has used his contacts to generate a proper map using CAD software. On Friday, Paul brought the generated map to Spring Hill. Paul, working alongside Rick and Larry, began reconciling the map to the cemetery - making adjustments and additions as necessary. You can see Paul at work in the seventh attachment - he is seated with the map on his lap. The resetting group is working on the Ogan stones to the right of Paul in the picture. Paul has another workday of data to check/verify, and then we will finally have our map. MANY THANKS, PAUL!

While a team of volunteers was setting stones, and another team working on the map, we had other teams maintaining paths, weeding, and removing winter debris. Rae and Pat worked on maintaining the paths around the Finley section of the cemetery; Jennifer and Caroline took on the paths near "McReynolds row," Candy and Jim removed tarp loads of Eucalyptus debris around the Lowry area, and Patsy took good care of the Robertson / Parmeter section. The eighth picture shows Jim and Patsy loading collected winter debris into Regional Parks' dump truck.

Thank you all for your perseverance in this project. Workdays for the restoration of Spring Hill began in October of 2006, when the county recognized title. It has been a long and labor-intensive effort. With the resetting of our stones, this process is passing a major milestone.

Come see our progress! And, please, come join us May 21st for the next workday.