MMI cadets clean up family cemetery, document gravestones for genealogy research

Marion Military Institute Leader’s Club cleaned up an historic family cemetery and helped make it easier for descendants to follow their family tree.

The Leader’s Club cleaned up a cemetery behind the home of Col. Ed and Susan Passmore on March 26, and then documented all the headstones they could read, according to Leader’s Club Sponsor Lt. Col. John Raczkowski.

Raczkowski said he will enter the information from the legible headstones on Find a Grave and the Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance, both of which keep databases accessible by the public.

The Leader’s Club was directed to the cemetery by Susan Passmore. While the Leader’s Club was cleaning the Marion Cemetery some time ago, Passmore told them of an old cemetery she played in as a child that she would like to see cleaned up before nature takes over.

“We wanted to do it on Halloween day, but that was during hunting season, so we couldn’t do it then, so we decided to do it now,” Raczkowski said. “Our mission was twofold. One was to get the cemetery clean, and two was to document those graves and put them in to Find a Grave for folks doing genealogy research.”

The Leader’s Club mission is to teach leadership, which Raczkowski defines as “influencing a person or a group of people into accomplishing a goal.” He explained these community service projects are a way to teach leadership. “We do three large projects per semester. A cadet is put in charge of the project to get leadership experience,” he said.

After the project is completed, the cadet in charge meets with the other cadets working under him or her to analyze the activity to find what went right, what went wrong and how to do it better next time. Raczkowski said cadets not only get an education, but they also get volunteer hour credits. “We keep track of all the volunteer hours so when they apply for a school or an academy or even a job, they can put down that they have so many volunteer hours within a month,” Raczkowski said.

If you want to report a cemetery, are doing genealogical research or just interested in history here are the websites:

Find a Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery-browse/USA/Alabama?id=state_3

The Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance https://www.alabama-cemetery-preservation.com/.