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"The Graveyard Groomer" stays busy repairing broken Indiana grave markers

For the last 19 years, John Walters has made it his mission to put busted tombstones and statutes back together again.

There are some things in life that are inexplicable. All of us have driven by a cemetery at one time or another, but few of us ever stop.

John Walters has places to go and people to see.

Well, sort of.

The skeleton heads on the dashboard may give you a hint about where he is headed, but to really understand his story, you have to start at the end.

"It's separating, so now water is going to get down, so I would like to take that out and put mortar in, because mortar takes the water in and lets it back out again," Walters observes as he checks a headstone at Orange Cemetery.

"What if someone asked you why do you worry about it?" I asked him.

"Because this is worth saving," came his reply.

For the last 19 years, the 58-year-old Walters has made it his mission to put busted tombstones and statutes back together again.

"This is the statute of Private John Shaw," Walters declared.

Shaw died in action in the Philippines in 1900.

"He was broke in 12 or 15 pieces, was what I had to start with," he continued looking at the statue pieces laying around him.

Shaw was victimized again by vandals in 1965.

"This leg here was broken and busted up like the right let over here," Walters concluded.

You see, John Walters is doing more than piecing together Private Shaw's statute. He is piecing together his life. He knows when he gets it all back together he will see a young 26-year-old man who had hoped to return to Indiana to be a teacher.

"I have been told with this line of work, 'There is nothing you can do with that. Nothing you can do with that' and I am looking at what it is and thinking the biggest part of success to me is just having the courage to try. We've got to try. To me, it is the love of the challenge and to know that when I return John Shaw and stand him back on his pedestal his parents put there for him, that is the reward. To me, that is the reward. If I didn't have to make a living at it, I would do it absolutely for nothing. I really would," he concluded.

Fortunately, he doesn't have to. Word is getting out about the Graveyard Groomer, so work is starting to pile up around him. In fact, so much so that now he is starting to bring it home with him. To the garage of his rural Columbia, Indiana home.

"I have been waiting to put that piece on," he said after he put one of the last original pieces in its place.

Now, he has to fill in the gaps.

"It makes me feel like a stone surgeon. Putting a fella together like this," Walters wryly observed.

As you watch him wield his tools like a scalpel, you wonder who will do this work 100 years from now. Who will show this much dedication, determination and love for us?

"Wow. As I sit here to work on this stone, how many people shed tears here? Said prayers here, gathered here and then moved on?" Walters asked. "He (Private Shaw) needs to go back over to where his parents had him sculpted and placed above his grave down in Greensburg. I won't be completely satisfied until I get him standing back over his respective spot."

And when he is done here, there is work to do in Muncie, when the weather warms up, outside the county courthouse. And there is always something to do up just up the road.

"You are afraid if you don't do it, who is going to?" I asked Walters as we walked through Orange Cemetery near his home.

"I guess. I don't know why it fell on me, but I just enjoy doing it," he replied.

You see, to John Walters, "rest in peace" means what it says. It doesn't mean to rest in pieces.

Visit John's website, GraveyardGroomer.com

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