Pittsford Cemetery is empty when Stefanie Hohmann arrives on a gray Sunday morning. Songbirds keep her company while the sky tries not to weep beside her. She kneels next to a moss-covered headstone and plucks at the green fibers that have crawled between letters etched in the granite long ago.
“This is sad,” she says. “You can’t tell who’s here.”
Hohmann has made hundreds of trips like this one to local cemeteries across Monroe County, where she scrapes and scrubs at decades-old markers until a name emerges from the decay. Many of these graves have been abandoned by the passing of time and the distance that builds between generations.
Hohmann has taken on the invisible and often thankless task of restoring them.
“It was a Covid hobby that stuck ― that’s what I tell people,” she said. The 31-year-old from Irondequoit has always gravitated toward cemeteries and finds peace in the history that they hold. She’s a military veteran, a young mother and a student of mortuary sciences working toward a career in death care.
“The farther back you go, obviously the less records you have,” Hohmann said. “Sometimes a headstone is really what’s remaining of a person.”
She joins a coalition of hobby preservationists across the country. They call themselves the grave geeks.
Hohmann walks local cemeteries looking for headstones buried in green. She seeks permission from cemetery officials or families before she works and uses proven preservation techniques to help them find new life. Her tools include a Tampico fiber brush and a non-toxic cleaning solution that soaks deep into the porous stone to expel stains from moss, mildew and lichen.
The work is fairly simple but is not covered in a cemetery’s promise of “perpetual care.” Occasionally, a family will reach out directly for help. Hohmann always says yes.
To her, the work is not only about preventing long-lasting damage ― but also a way to honor the forgotten.
She has cleaned the headstones of entire families, Revolutionary War soldiers, and children who perished too soon. Many times, Hohmann will look into the person’s background as a way to connect with them and their story. Today she uncovers the headstone of Mary Bahringer, a Kodak worker who died in 1949 at 60 years old.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard this quote: ‘They say you die twice. The first time is when your body stops working ― when you stop breathing. And the second time is when your name is spoken for the last time,'” Hohmann said. “And so, I feel like by doing this work, I’m keeping their memory alive in a way. Or, I try to at least.”
Hohmann also works with local historical societies and cemetery officials to host workshops on headstone preservation efforts. You can follow her work on Instagram @thatgraveyardgal.
— Kayla Canne covers community safety for the Democrat and Chronicle with a focus on immigration, police accountability, government surveillance and how people are impacted by violence. Follow her on Instagram @bykaylacanne. Get in touch at kcanne@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: She restores forgotten headstones across Monroe County
Reporting by Kayla Canne, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
