The headstones stand like waves of marble, row upon row, the stones so close together they almost touch. The summer sun rises above the quietness of the pristine grounds, the marble headstones and the giant magnolias. The place is Andersonville National Cemetery. The headstones mark the final resting place of 12,920 Union prisoners of war who died at the Civil War prison camp.

Two maintenance workers at Andersonville National Historic Site make their way into the cemetery to begin their day’s work. Raymond Hall of Oglethorpe and Nate Dariso of DeSoto are making sure historically correct Civil War headstones mark each grave. The two employees are replacing 500 headstones in the national cemetery. Through the years numerous headstones have been replaced due to damage and wear. Newer headstones, however, had departed in design from the traditional shield and raised letters of the historical stone markers. In 2009, the National Park Service received funding for nine temporary jobs to complete several different projects at Andersonville National Historic Site. Hall and Dariso were hired to replace the differently designed Civil War headstones with ones that had the same look as the traditional historic stone markers.

The two men began their task earlier this summer and quickly realized, even with proper safety equipment such as back supports, that the labor-intensive method they were using to remove headstones might be improved with a little imagination and ingenuity. To lift the 175-lb. headstones from the ground, the two men had been using a metal bar with an attached C-clamp. To Hall, the method presented a challenge. He went home one night and developed a design to make the job easier and safer. The result was a piece of equipment with four legs for stabilization, a c-clamp on a rope, and a hand crank. The equipment was designed to straddle a row of headstones and enable workers to safely remove a stone.

Visitors, curious about the project, stop and talk with Hall and Dariso. The visitor thanks them for the job they are doing and Hall smiles. “It is nice to get compliments,” he says, “but there are other maintenance employees in the cemetery who work just as hard as we do.” Dariso echoes the sentiments. They are proud to be a part of the Andersonville story. “I have an attachment to the cemetery now that I have worked here and know more about the history,” Dariso says. It is a history that Hall wishes more people knew about. “We need to let people know what is here. Show the grandkids,” he says.

Thanks to Raymond Hall, Nate Dariso and the other dedicated maintenance employees at Andersonville National Historic Site, visitors can walk the sacred grounds of the cemetery and learn more about the greatest of sacrifices made by their fellow Americans.