Time and the environment have obscured the names of those brave soldiers, so the cemetery is planning a workshop to educate people on the correct way to clean them.

The cemetery itself was established during the Civil War and celebrated its 160th anniversary three years ago, according to Caleb Hipple, general manager at Wildwood.

“We figured that this would be a great time to actually come up here and clean these headstones,” Hipple said.

Hipple, who was trained in the correct procedure for cleaning the headstones by Jonathan Appell, of the Atlas Preservation program, has in turn helped others learn how to safely do it.

KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette General Manager of Wildwood Cemetery Caleb Hipple demonstrates the proper way to clean a headstone, including these in the Civil War Circle at the cemetery.

“A lot of people will come up to the cemetery and ask us, are we allowed to use just Dawn dish soap or bleach on a headstone? And the unfortunate thing is that, since headstones are made of rock, they’re made of different types of stone, the minerals in them can react negatively with different types of cleaners that you know would work on just a countertop or something,” he said.

Appell’s group has formulated a product, Endurance, which Hipple noted is as close to pH neutral as possible and is also considered a biological cleaner.

“If you look at the headstones here,” he said, “the different spotting that is occurring here is from different types of lichen that are growing. A lichen is basically…a combination material as well as a fungal material. So they kind of work together to make a bed on which the fungal material can spread, and then any biological material, like pollen or leaves grass that gets mowed, if it rests on here, it can kind of feed off of that, and it spreads.”

“So, what we do is we take our biological cleaner and we spray it on here, and it will attack any of those cells. And then the second thing is you don’t see a lot of lichen on the side of this stone, but you can see it on some of the other ones, the staining, so there’s surfactants in this. What a surfactant does is it’s kind of like it’s almost like a soapy residue. It will make the pores on the stone, because the stone has pores just like your face, and marble has even more pores on it, because it’s kind of a grittier, less packed material. So, what you would do is you spray this on, and it will help lift that staining, and then kill any of that biological material,”he said.

The cleaner can be left on for 15 minutes before scrubbing the headstone with a nylon brush and warm water to remove the material and use a non-abrasive scraper to remove any remaining lichen.

“What you do is, you take a look at your headstone, you make sure that the headstone itself is not so damaged that just touching it is going to cause it to fall apart,” Hipple said.

He indicated that the headstones in the Civil War Circle have been well-taken care of so that usually isn’t a problem.

Once the cleaning is done, the names on the headstones become clear and the stones themselves are returned to their original white.

“They become a lot easier to read after they’re clean. The contrast and the shadows are a lot easier to read at that point,” he said.

Hipple admitted that it is not only one of his favorite pastimes, but it’s also one of the ways that the cemetery generates income.

“We do headstone cleaning services for individuals, if they’re not able to clean the headstones themselves. We raised enough money to purchase a 300-gallon water trailer, which we go up through the cemetery with, and we clean headstones, but we also understand that a lot of families want to have that lasting connection, where they’re able to actually be the ones to fix the headstone, or be the ones to clean it themselves,” he said.

The cemetery is offering a workshop at 10 a.m. June 20 for anyone who would like to be certified in the cleaning process. There will also be buckets available for sale at that time which include cleaning supplies. The cost is $25 for the certification. The cost of the supplies, if purchased, is $50.

Then on June 27 at noon the cemetery will be offering free hot dogs and soda to anyone who wants to volunteer to help clean the headstones in the Civil War Circle. There will be cleaning supplies available and brief instructions on the process.

“We’re gonna have kind of a Cliff Notes presentation on it and we’re gonna explain to people, all right, this is the crash course on how to clean headstones, if you have any questions. We’ll kind of be going through the section here to make sure everybody’s doing it properly. We will have volunteers that are also able to kind of chaperone as well,” he explained.

The goal is to clean all the headstones in the Civil War section.

“That’s 192 Civil War veterans that may have been buried elsewhere or were buried directly here,” he said.

“Statistically if you have three generations of family in the Lycoming County area, there’s over a 95 percent chance that you’re related to someone buried up in this specific section. However, since a lot of these people may not be native to Williamsport, they may have just served in Pennsylvania, and then they just got affiliated here somehow. It’s not always easy to determine,” he said.

The cemetery has about 54,000 records in their office to help people determine if they are related to one of the soldiers in that section.

“So long as you know a family member or a deceased family member that might be buried here or that passed in Williamsport, we can always help at our office to figure out if you are related to a Civil War veteran,” he said.

Although there is no pre-registration for the two events, Hipple said that they would like to know how many people plan to attend. Any questions can be directed to the cemetery’s office at: 570-323-8421.

“At the end of the day, we would like as many people up here as possible, because even if all these headstones get clean, there are over 60,000 people buried here at Wildwood. So, there’s plenty of headstones everywhere. If someone wants to get involved and help out, we can definitely help them with that process,” he added.