CHAMPAIGN COUNTY, Ohio — Volunteers spent the morning putting flags on the graves of some of our nation’s earliest veterans.
There are eight Revolutionary War heroes buried at Rector Gard Cemetery in Champaign County.
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A local man noticed the cemetery was not being taken care of, and it bothered him. He’s been trying to fix up the spot over the past three years.
News Center 7’s Taylor Robertson stopped by and talked to him Thursday morning.
Some people don’t believe that the plot of land was a cemetery. It may look like it’s been abandoned, and that’s because it was until John Zerkle came along.
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“We’re not going to give up, we’re going to keep trying to get this to look like a cemetery,” Zerkle said, who is the lead volunteer at the cemetery.
Zerkle grew up in the area and used to visit Rector Gard as a kid.
He moved away and came back years later and saw that this place had been forgotten about.
Some of the headstones were either buried or so old that you couldn’t read the name of who they belonged to.
“They call it a pioneer cemetery; it’s one of the first in Ohio,” Zerkle said.
We found the Enoch Family gravesite. Grave Finder said they have ties to George Washington and are some of the first people to make Ohio their home.
“They started the first sacrifice, some of these Revolutionary War veterans,” he said.
It’s why Zerkle felt called to revamp the site.
He said he’s heard from people who have relatives buried here from all over the country.
“Utah, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, all over Ohio, some of them have come and cleaned and helped,” he said.
Ahead of America’s 250th birthday this weekend, Zerkle and a few volunteers placed American flags around the cemetery.
“It’s a little hard to see now with the corn, but eventually, when the corn is down, those flags will be flying,” Zerkle said.
Zerkle said the next step is to wait for the crops to go down and then they’ll focus on adding a walking path into the gravesite so people can stop by.
He hopes one day it will be fully appreciated for the history it holds.
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