Army of volunteers helps restore historic Civil War cemetery

(AP) — College students on spring break joined hundreds of other volunteers at a cemetery dating to the Civil War, realigning hundreds of tilted headstones and scrubbing grime from thousands more.

College students from Ohio and Boy Scouts from Texas were among more than 800 people who pitched in to restore graves at Chalmette National Cemetery near New Orleans.

The National Trust for Historical Preservation called volunteers ages 16 to 70 to take part in its 3-year-old "HOPE Crew," or Hands-On Preservation Experience.

When the OSU students were there, Rusty Brenner of Texas Cemetery Restoration LLC in Dallas explained how to calculate the depth of the holes they needed and how much gravel to add before setting the headstones precisely upright.

Jason Church of the park service's National Center for Preservation Technology and Training said Chalmette's cemetery is in a more industrial area than most national cemeteries.

Nearly 130 Confederate soldiers also were buried in a mass grave at Chalmette but were moved after the war when Congress passed a law stating only Union soldiers could be buried in the national cemeteries, Wallisch said.

[...] have community groups, military groups, high school students and alumni from several universities.