SAUGUS — For the better part of two years now, when the weather is warm, Ron Wallace will head to Riverside Cemetery to get to work restoring headstones across the more than a century-old cemetery.
Wallace, a Town Meeting member from Precinct 5, was just reappointed to a second term on the Cemetery Commission by the Board of Selectmen, who voted unanimously to appoint him to serve another two years.
“Ron has gone over and above,” said Vice Chair Debra Panetta.
Wallace said his interest in restoration, a volunteer effort he takes on separate from his work with the commission, began with his father’s grave. When he joined the commission two years ago, a fellow member told him about The Good Cemeterian, a public charity with “a mission to preserve and honor the past through inspiration and education.”
“I went on and checked it out [and] I was amazed that there’s a lot of people that do it around the country,” he said. “I just tried it and it was fun.”
Since then, Wallace has restored roughly 30 headstones in the cemetery on “my own time and my own dime,” he said.
The process, he said, begins with wetting the stone before applying D/2 Biological Solution, a locally made cleaning solution designed specifically for headstones, and taking a soft brush to the stone.
Wallace, who works in construction, said the amount of time it takes to clean one headstone varies.
“One can look real bad and I could do it quick and another one might not look as bad and it’s just caked on there,” he said, adding that the restoration is “hard, physical work.”
He was quick to note that during the winter season restoration work is paused, as the headstone could crack if the temperature is below 40 degrees and the water applied to it freezes.
One of the key aspects of the work, Wallace said, is ensuring he has permission from families to clean the headstones of their loved ones. He said he does not begin work on a grave until he has explicit permission from a family member.
“I lived in Saugus my whole life so I know a lot of people and if I see a familiar name, I’ll reach out to someone,” he said.
But, that process can be difficult, particularly for some of the oldest graves in the cemetery.
“Most people are into it but I’ve had some people that weren’t super receptive to it,” he said. “I’m not pushy and if they don’t want me to do it, it’s not a big deal.”
The cleaning process often takes weeks, Wallace said, as the chemical cleaner eats away at the algae and other bacteria built up on the headstones.
The largest project he has taken up to date is cleaning the Ben Johnson monument, which took two to three gallons of cleaner and about two weeks of work.
“That was a big, big job,” Wallace said, noting the monument hadn’t been cleaned in 90 years. “It was a lot a lot of scrubbing”
Despite the laborious nature of the work, Wallace said seeing the finished product is tremendously rewarding, adding that he puts a special emphasis on finding veterans’ graves and restoring those.
“When it’s done, it’s well worth it,” he said. “If you’re a veteran, you served your whole country and you deserve to have a clean stone.”
“I just like to give back to my community,” he added.
