Volunteers honor Civil War veterans in Rockford

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — Volunteers gathered at a Rockford cemetery to honor Civil War veterans by cleaning their gravestones.

Jennifer Dyer Mickelson has been honoring civil war veterans for decades thanks in large part to the work her late father had done to do the same. She carried on his legacy by volunteering to clean stones at the Cedar Bluff Cemetery.

“My mom and I were like, ‘hey, this is the kind of stuff that we do, that we like to do,'” Dyer Mickelson said.

She volunteered for the group 815 Stone Scrubbers, a 501c3 based in Rockford.

Janie Jenkin founded and runs the non-profit. She said it’s always an honor to respect those who served during the American Civil War.

“Some of these men are founders and they really actually built and were instrumental after the war, coming back and building Rockford and making it the community what it is today,” Jenkin said. “A lot of them were like for instance the stone we’re working on now, Thomas Lawler, was the Postmaster of Rockford and he also was very instrumental at getting Memorial Hall built.”

She said her group’s efforts are showing great results. More people volunteered for her most recent outing than ever before.

“It’s amazing,” Jenkin said. ” We started off with three volunteers last year. We had over 50 volunteers come through our program completely in an entire season and this year, wow, like our first one and we have 30 people that showed up here today, so that really shows to me that people really care about taking care of these veterans.”

Dyer Mickelson said each soldier deserves to be respected and taken care of.

“I’m not doing this for my personal benefit,” she said. “I’m doing this so that these stones come back to life, so people who come out and visit can read them, can see them.”

It’s a mission she said can have a lasting impact.

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