Aldo Vivas is a senior at Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, he, like 24 other young people, worked 6 weeks as interns at the Greenwood Cemetery in Sunset Park.
“We were here restoring, excavating and cleaning the tombs, so that this place is better than it was before, around here more or less below we clean and repair with a type of glue”, says Aldo Vivas, an intern and who has collaborated on this activity.
Over the summer, students learned about headstone restoration processes, how to identify graves according to cemetery records, and even how to keep gardens and trees in good repair.
“We also had to weed and remove some grass, because the grass takes a lot of water and doesn’t leave it to the trees. We did that for two weeks, and right now those last two weeks we were learning history and how to restore,” adds Vivas.
Mars Harris, was also part of the boarding school, after identifying the graves without tombstones, it occurred to them to use all the waste found in the cemetery and recycle it.
“We collected the masks, napkins and even potato chip covers, and we created paper flowers, the idea was to place tombstones made by us on the graves that did not have one, or disappeared”, says the intern Mars Harris.
Camila Rivadeneyra, is a teacher and explains:
“This tombstone that we find here has been created with objects found by the boys; quite a few things you find here could be considered garbage, you find glass bottles or a toy cart there.”
Some sections of the cemetery are public land, and many of the graves from 100 to 200 years ago are those of people without financial means.
The vast majority of graves in Green-Wood Cemetery are maintained at private funds.
The internship program has been going on for years and one of its objectives is to create empathy for the deceased in students.
Neela Wickremesinghe, director of restoration and preservation at Greenwood Cemetery:
“As you can see all these monuments and tombstones made of marble, at least 90% of them you would not have seen 6 months ago, since they were buried, they had sunk over the years, but our students unearthed them, restored them, and with the historical documentation.”
2023-08-20 18:20:00
#Students #improve #Brooklyns #Greenwood #Cemetery
