GREENSBORO, N.C. — Walking into Green Hill Cemetery, you are greeted with Greensboro history.
“There is a lot of historic Greensboro names in the cemetery here; you’ll see the streets out here, and you’ll come here and see these same names," said local volunteer Cliff.
And today, the community has come out to preserve it.
“I nominated us online through Atlas Preservation; I went to their seminar in Statesville last year, and a month later, I got a notification, 'Hey, you’ve been selected!' And I was like, 'Oh gosh, we’ve been selected!'" David Craft said.
The city of Greensboro and Friends of Green Hill Cemetery partnered with Atlas Preservation to spend the day restoring the historic cemetery.
Craft has been volunteering to restore local gravesides for years, and seeing the 40-plus people out at Green Hill on Thursday makes it all worth it.
“That’s the whole point in getting people out to do this! Because I’ve learned that I can be interested in doing this and do this on my own, but if I can get 10 people to do it, we can do 10 times more, and I like the idea of doing 10 times more," said Craft.
For some, it’s a community event.
"We got up early this morning and thought it would be an interesting thing to clean and help out the community. Yeah, we thought it would be nice," said one volunteer.
For others, it is a preservation of history.
“You see a lot of those stones getting broken; if somebody doesn’t fix those, document that that they’re buried here, you’re gonna lose that history," implored another.
And for a few, it’s about giving back.
“I’m a veteran with PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and I really wanted to make an impact on my community and everyone else’s to help preserve love and memories because that’s all we really have in this life," said a local volunteer, Victoria.
No matter why they were out there through the day, what mattered was they were there – giving dignity to the Greensboro natives before us.