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Teen restores gravestones and maps at Burge Cemetery
New London teen earns fair honors for cemetery mapping and restoration project
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
NEW LONDON — At just 13 years old, Mila Howard has spent more than 90 hours helping restore and preserve local history at Burge Cemetery. This week, she presented that work at the Henry County Fair — and earned a lilac ribbon for her efforts.
“What I present at the fair was a foldout that had pictures of me resetting stones, GPS locating, and cleaning graves,” Mila said. “On it had what the steps were to do each one of those things.”
Working alongside her father, Jesse Howard, who is president of the Burge Cemetery board, Mila helped restore over 30 sunken or buried headstones in the historic Pioneer section of the cemetery, which dates back to the 1830s.
“What we did is we took these two concrete — I think it was pavers — and we put them against the stone,” Mila explained. “We packed them all with dirt, and then we put the grass back on top … so that supports the stone and makes sure they don’t collapse again into the ground.”
Part of Mila’s project for this year’s Henry County Fair included restoring the gravestone in Burge Cemetery.
The cleaning process was extensive.
“You have to lightly water it, then you scrub it with a brush, like a fine brush, and then you scrub it again, pour more water on it,” Jesse said. “It’s a lot of scrubbing, a lot of scraping with plastic utensils.”
After the storm that hit last spring, many landmarks like trees were gone, making graves harder to find. Jesse said the idea to map the stones digitally came from Mila.
“We were working in the cemetery and Mila came up with the idea and said ‘It would be a whole lot easier if people could just use their cellphones to find where their loved ones were, instead of landmarks such as trees,’ because the trees were all gone,” he recalled her saying. “I was like, that’s a great project for you.”
Mila began using her phone and the Find A Grave app to log GPS coordinates for graves throughout the cemetery.
“Once we cleaned [a gravestone], we put it back up, and then we took a picture of it … and then we located it, of course, to make sure where we know it is,” she said.
According to Jesse, the cemetery had only about 8% of graves GPS-located before.
“With Mila’s work, that expedited that process. So now we can just send them a link, and they walk them right to their headstone.”
Mila said she feels “very accomplished” knowing her work is already helping others.
“There’s an old map that they have at Burge, and it might get lost someday,” she said. “So, why don’t we just put it on our phone that saves everything for us in an app?”
One of those graves is especially meaningful to Mila.
“That actually is one of the things that she has on the poster board itself — directions to find her grandma,” Jesse said, referring to Mila’s grandmother, who is buried at Burge.
“There were some challenges,” Mila admitted. “Like if we couldn’t find the grave on there, we had to figure out how to add a memorial … and if we couldn’t find a grave, we had to dig around and search for the grave because it was already logged in there, but it had been so long that we had to rediscover it.”
Mila’s project, entered in the science and technology category, was one of five she presented at the fair. This project along with two photographs and a dresser restoration project all received lilac ribbons, which means they’re recommended for state. Her other project, a plant holder, received a blue ribbon, which is the highest ribbon one can receive for a project before being recommended for state.
If selected, Mila hopes her project will have an impact beyond her local community.
“I hope the state notices it … just thinks like, why would a person be doing this? And then, with the pictures and all my presentation, they’ll see that the reason to do this is so everyone can find their family members, because that’s very important,” she said.
Asked why this kind of history work matters, Mila didn’t hesitate.
“We can’t forget our history, because if we forget our history, we’re bound to do the same thing again,” she said. “So instead of forgetting it, we need to remember it, restore it, and not take it for granted.”
Jesse and Kasi, Mila’s mom, couldn’t be more proud of all the work Mila put into all her projects for the fair, including this one.
“It really hits me and Kasi as parents … just seeing that work ethic and that grit come through is just — it’s so awesome,” Jesse said. “I love seeing that confidence. I love seeing the work ethic and just the bond that she had with her mom on doing all the woodworking projects.”
Comments: AnnaMarie.Kruse@southeastiowaunion.com
