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March 24, 2022BY BILL DOYLE | CFP CORRESPONDENT
You could say that Leonard Bettez moved heaven and earth for his Eagle Scout project.
With the help of friends and family, he unearthed and cleaned more than 1,000 flat gravestone markers at St. John Cemetery in Gardner.
“It was very much appreciated,” said Father Stephen E. Lundrigan, Annunciation Parish pastor.
St. John’s belongs to Annunciation Parish, which includes Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church and the Holy Spirit Chapel. Leonard is one of eight Scouts in Troop 4, which meets each Wednesday at the chapel.
“There’s a number of people when they go to the cemetery,” Father Lundrigan said, “and their loved one’s marker is difficult to see or overgrown, it distresses them a little bit. To see it cleaned, I think it helps to demonstrate an honor for that loved one, that even in death, there is a care being taken.”
Each May, the Scouts work in collaboration with Don Robinson, the parish director of facilities and cemeteries, to sweep and rake the cemetery. During one of the cemetery sweeps, Leonard and a few others noticed an indentation in the ground. So they dug away and found a row of flat grave markers for World War I veterans that had become overgrown. Mr. Robinson and his assistant maintain three Catholic cemeteries, a church, a chapel and a school so they don’t have time to keep the markers cleared.
So Leonard decided to clean as many markers as he could for his Eagle Scout project. Last October and November, he worked in the cemetery for four or five hours a day for four Saturdays.
Nearly 40 friends and family members helped out on at least one of the Saturdays, and they unearthed some flat grave markers from as far back as the 1880s.
St. John’s Cemetery opened around 1860.“I just thought it was really nice that a bunch of people thought this would be a good idea to do,” Leonard said.
Leonard, 16, lives in Gardner and is a sophomore who studies plumbing at Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School in Fitchburg.
“Leonard is a determined youth,” Troop 4 Scoutmaster Scott Rosengren said. “Whatever he puts his mind to, he focuses on it and he gets it done. He’s not afraid to tackle any type of project, whether it’s something like this or something directly in the troop.”
Most of the flat gravestone markers measure two feet by one foot and are supposed to be flush to the ground, but some have sunk and others became overgrown. Some of them hadn’t been cleared in decades.
“Some of them sink so low, you almost lose sight of them,” Mr. Robinson said.
Using steak knives and butter knives, Leonard and the others got down on their hands and knees to cut the turf away from the markers. They scooped up the turf with putty knives and ice scrapers and dumped it in buckets.
“We didn’t need any fancy tools,” he said. “It was just a matter of lots of labor.”
Finally, they cleaned the markers with paint brushes and hair brushes.
“Then they were pretty much as good as new,” he said.
“It’s pretty labor intensive,” Mr. Robinson said, “and, boy, what a great job they did.”
When people drove by and asked what Leonard and the others were doing, the passersby were touched to hear about his Eagle Scout project.
“They said it was one of the most amazing things they had seen happen in a long time,” Leonard said.
Whenever anyone tells Mr. Robinson how much they appreciate the cleanup, he makes sure to give Leonard the credit.
Some of the volunteers also cleaned the gravestones of relatives in other parts of the cemetery.
Mr. Robinson said this was the first time an Eagle Scout cleared flat gravestone markers in his 15 years of maintaining the cemeteries. Mr. Rosengren had also never heard of such an Eagle Scout project.
“It was a most worthy project,” Mr. Rosengren said. “Leonard came up with it himself. To me, it’s very impressive for an Eagle Scout candidate to come up with this project that he wanted to do and put a lot of effort into making it happen.”
Mr. Rosengren and Leonard’s father, David, assisted each day. Mr. Rosengren lives in Gardner and is an altar server and lector at the 8:30 a.m. Sunday Mass at Holy Spirit.
On Feb. 28, Leonard passed his board of review, the final step in becoming an Eagle Scout. He expects to hold his Eagle Scout ceremony this summer.
“It means a lot to me,” he said.
