Fifteen high school students were able to take a long look backward as they spent the day recording gravestone inscriptions dating back to the 1850s at Green River Cemetery.
Students compete for acceptance and then sign on for two weeks' summer work.
For the Franklin County group, their first week's assignment is to the local Historic Commission. Commission Chairman Peter Miller has put them to work on a project to record the carving on what he calls endangered gravestones. These are stones with inscriptions likely to disappear in the next 50 years from the effects of weather and air pollution. Indeed, marble obelisks erected in the early 20th century now look mottled and pitted, the inscriptions starting to lose their edge as moss grows across white stones. The students struggled to read many of the inscriptions.