Amanda Avink, who voluntarily cleans and repairs headstones, footstones and markers at Oakdale Cemetery, rinses a headstone with water before she uses a soft nylon brush to remove moss on Wednesday.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Ally Lanasa)
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Many may consider a cemetery a spooky site, but one resident enjoys spending her free time there to preserve the dignity of the deceased.
Amanda Avink has been cleaning and re-leveling headstones at Oakdale Cemetery, located at 1290 W Fifth St. at the intersection of Raymond Road and West Fifth Street, since the coronavirus pandemic began. The cemetery was established in 1880, which means the headstones have experienced years of grime.
“I have always had a fascination and respect for history,” Avink said. “I just want to make sure that the people that are buried there get the respect that they deserve. They built this community, they built this town. They deserve to be remembered.”
Since April 2020, Avink, with the help of her husband and 14-year-old daughter, has cleaned over 100 headstones.
Avink’s volunteer efforts at the cemetery stemmed from research about a former Marysville resident, Maryetta Robinson Moore (1843-1915).
“I was researching the (Bridges, Jillisky, Streng, Weller & Gullifer, LLC) law firm here in Marysville that has supposedly a ghost that haunts it, Maryetta, and she … and her children and her husband are buried at Oakdale,” Avink said. “So, we went out there and found their headstones.”
Then, she started to clean headstones based on Find a Grave requests that had unreadable stones.
“The headstones were unreadable or just filthy, and so I did a bunch of research into how to properly clean a headstone because I was very concerned,” she said.
Avink took a workshop with Atlas Preservation CEO Jonathan Appell at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus. She learned to clean the headstones with D/2, a biological solution, which is used to clean headstones at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The City of Marysville provides some of the D/2, but Avink has purchased D/2 and other necessary cleaning supplies.
The solution typically costs more than $40 per gallon.
“If I put a gallon in there, I get somewhere in the vicinity of – depending on how big the stones are –between six and 10 (headstones cleaned),” Avink explained.
According to a post on her Facebook page, “Honoring Oakdale Cemetery – Marysville, Ohio,” bleach, stainless brushes or wire brushes should never be used to clean the headstones. Additionally, pressure washing is not recommended. Avink brushes moss and other grime off markers with a soft nylon brush.
Currently, Avink is focused on cleaning headstones in section D “because that’s where Maryetta and her kids are,” she said. She plans to move to neighboring sections when section D is complete.
“We discovered that you can probe for headstones, so we’ve started probing and we’ve raised countless headstones, footstones, markers throughout that section,” she added. “We’ve started repairing headstones and leveling them.”
Avink volunteers at the cemetery almost every weekday after work and as frequently as her schedule allows on the weekends. While there, she has also been raking and bagging acorns to make it safer for visitors walking to plots.
In addition, she has become familiar with the history of those buried in section D and helps visitors looking for the headstones of loved ones.
Since promoting her preservation work on social media, Avink has received interest from followers about joining the effort. This winter, Avink plans to work with the city to potentially expand the volunteerism at the cemetery.
Although Avink has no personal connection to the cemetery having only moved to Marysville 13 years ago, she has plans for future restoration projects at the site.
“There is about two or three plots of people that are buried there from the old cemetery when the railroad came in and they had to move everybody over to Oakdale, and I’d like to see a monument put up or a marker or something acknowledging that they’re there because some do not have headstones,” Avink said. “But I’d like to see something put there to honor them and respect them because right now they don’t have names. I like giving people back their names.”