It's not uncommon, she added, to encounter German epitaphs hereabouts. Hetzel methodically moved from headstone to headstone, row to row, needing only three hours to transcribe the 300 some names. Despite memorializing the dead, cemeteries also can be records of tragedy. Hetzel stopped long enough to contemplate one group of graves - three tombstones of people, all with the same last name, who died in 1917 and 1918. The father's stone, next to the girl's, had a photograph of the two of them together, her sitting on his lap.
Graves often memorialize the tragic consequences of disease, car accidents, war and poverty.
Graves there are marked usually with nothing more than a numbered brick. Hetzel, who has compiled more than 30 books and documented the local graves of every veteran from the Revolutionary War on, has put none of her work on the Internet, but has donated it to various local historical societies. Ironically, Hetzel plans on being cremated when she dies and having her ashes scattered near a family lake home. It clashes with some of my other values. People will just have to look me up in the courthouse.