This article appeared in the Feb. 1, 2013 Jewish Advocate.

 

http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/news/2013-02-01/Local_News/I_touched_the_stone_but_the_stone_really_touched_m.html

“I touched the stone, but the stone really touched me”:

Lynn artisan restores NEHM texts with precision and care

By Susie Davidson
Special to the Advocate


With the passage of 68 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, duly noted last week on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the memory of each and every victim remains precious. Isaiah’s famous words, “For so says the L-rd….  ‘Even unto them I will give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name (yad vashem)…an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off’,” inspired the title of Israel’s official Holocaust Memorial center. And at the New England Holocaust Memorial, the prophet’s words are literally etched in stone. Engraved on its black granite walkway and six glass towers are the names and numbers of those who left no one to carry on their legacy. The Memorial, which lies along Boston's Freedom Trail, was founded by survivor Stephan B. Ross and dedicated in October, 1995.

While the glass panels of the towers are inscribed with messages and six million numbers, countless visitors traversing the walkway first read about major events in the 1933-1945 timeline of the Holocaust on a black granite wall. They then pass over the word "Remember," in Hebrew and English, on the pathway.

According to the website MonumentLettering.com, granite is the most durable material for monuments. But these untold footsteps, as well as the harsh Boston elements we know all too well, have taken their toll on these crucial words on the entrance monolith, a time capsule on the site, and along the granite walkway. Enter Beth Jones, owner of A1 Grave Groomers in Lynn, who cleans, restores, and preserves headstones and monuments. Letter by letter, she is giving the NEHM the delicate, painstaking, and loving attention it deserves.

 

“The NEHM highlight faded because it has been 20 years of severe weather, dirt and grime, acid rain, air pollution, and tens of thousands of feet,” she explained. Stones can also crack or break from outside factors such as vandalism, which Jones also services. “Most cemeteries don’t take care of the stones,” she said. “They take care of the grounds.” Further, cemeteries do not usually offer headstone care as part of their “perpetual care” package,” she added.

 

According to the NEHM site, no masking material or stencils, often utilized in the addition of letters, can be used on its type of surface. The letters can only be restored, and restored manually. Therefore, Jones’ technique involves the painting of each and every weathered, engraved stone letter. “Using a teeny-tiny paintbrush with just a few bristles, I found that I could paint the letters manually without spraying, which was a better technique for this particular stone,” she said.

 

Although Jones needs ample amounts of both discipline and concentration for her work, and even more for this project, she often stops to help educate passers-by, according to CJP Facilities Manager Bill Satterlund. “CJP hired Beth to restore the painted inscriptions on the walkways and on the donor monuments," he said, while praising her commitment to the site. "She not only does a great job restoring the readability, but she has also been an excellent ambassador for us, and has always taken time to answer questions from visitors," he said. According to Satterlund, CJP assumed responsibility for managing the NEHM site as part of a Summer, 2011 merge that followed a long partnership between the organizations.

Jones and her late husband, Robert founded A1 Grave Groomers in Wisconsin in 2009 as a licensee of parent company Grave Groomers of St. Paul, Minn. When Robert passed away in 2010, she moved to Lynn, and her company now serves all of New England. Previously, she was a researcher and marketer for DuPont Pharmaceuticals. When the company was sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb, she was laid off after 22 years of service. She then worked in the fields of cell culture and veterinary diagnostics, and became Marketing Director for a ServiceMaster franchise, until a lack of disasters to restore resulted in more layoffs.

“At this point, my husband  and I were fed up with the layoff situation,” she said. The couple assessed their strengths and business skills.  “At that time, Robert's father passed away, and was buried in a crowded cemetery in Philadelphia,” she recalled. “We were appalled at the condition of many of the headstones, and thought there must be somebody to take care of them.  As it turned out, there were a few people in the country who could, but not many. We had found our unmet market need that dovetailed with our strengths, which included attention to detail, the ability to work hands-on, knowledge of construction and landscaping, an appreciation of cemeteries, and comfort in marketing,” she said. They found John Peterson of Grave Groomers, who was seeking to attain national branding stature, and offered education and certification. On the verge of their first official training in May of 2010, Robert became ill, yet insisted that she go. “He was in the hospital the whole week that I was at training, and I gave him play-by-play updates by phone of what I was learning,” she said. When he passed away in November, she continued learning all she could about headstone and monument restoration.  She sold her home and in November, 2011, she moved with her dog, Bro, to Boston to stay with Ed “Moose” Savage, a Jewish musician and collectibles dealer who had been Robert's college roommate and best friend.

“One day this past April, Ed and I were going to the Sports Museum at the TD Garden, as he had business there with the curator,” Jones recalled.  When the two walked past the NEHM, they saw a truck parked in the middle of it. “I thought, ‘How rude!,’ and I had intentions of giving the owner a piece of my mind,” she said. Instead, she encountered a contractor named Chance Anderson, who was working on the monument. “He was spray-painting some of the letters, and asked me if I knew how to do that.  It was a strange question to ask someone you just met, but I answered that yes, I could paint the letters manually without spraying, which was a better technique for this particular stone.” The contractor gave her his contact information for the Combined Jewish Philanthropies. “As fate would have it, he had other jobs to do and couldn't do this one,” she said.  And I was honored and grateful to receive this job by ‘Chance!’" In June, she met with met Sarah Feinberg and Satterlund of CJP, and began working on the site in July. She just has a few more sentences to complete, so still works there, on good weather days.



"This project has been so much more to me than just another job," she said. "Site visitors ask questions and share their personal connection with me. They cried. They prayed. They laughed.  And I cried and prayed and laughed as well.  Parents explain the Holocaust to their children. Holocaust survivors' children and spouses express their gratitude."

“[Jones' interaction with visitors] has been a great side benefit that has helped further the mission of the Memorial to never forget the Holocaust," said Satterlund. But she says that for her, it is an honor and a privilege.

“The site is for everyone to share, yet it is intensely personal,” said Jones. “It is its own community, living and breathing all by itself.  I became a part of that community, embraced by the visitors, the local shopkeepers, and the resident homeless.  All of this at a time when I was still grieving the death of my husband, and needed, desperately, to find meaning again in my work,” she said.

 

“I needed time to reflect, and I needed to take care of something again. The memorial has given me opportunity to speak to people from all over the world, and hear how their lives had been transformed from the Holocaust.  And I found that my life was transformed.  I touched the stone, but the stone really touched me.”

 

 

For information on A1GraveGroomers, please visit www.A1GraveGroomers.com. For information on the New England Holocaust Memorial, please visit www.nehm.org.

 


 

More technical info on how Beth Jones works on the NEHM:

 

 

This memorial's granite is incredibly beautiful and rather unique, but it possesses a few major technical issues concerning its restoration of the engraved lettering: the finish, the script, the previous 'paint'

 

THE FINISH:

     None of the stone is polished.  The walkway is honed (smooth and no reflection).  The entrance monolith is flame-finished (bumpy and textured).  Most headstones are manufactured with a shiny, smooth, polished area that has been engraved.  This smooth, glass-like area can easily be masked with a stencil that allows for various methods of highlight or paint application.  Because these surfaces are highly textured, any masking protocol is near impossible.  It IS possible to engrave NEW words, but restoring EXISTING words must be done without the assistance of any masking.  All of these stones were engraved and highlighted in the factory.  I consulted many experts in the industry for this job, and not one person had ever seen flame-finished granite used as the area in a monument that was engraved.  I was told that it makes dramatic borders where the engraved words rest in a smooth area of the stone.  Any restoration work would have to be done by hand, without a stencil or mask.

 

THE SCRIPT:

     Some characters are fairly 'reasonable' to paint, with or without a stencil.  They are large with clean lines.  Most characters on this memorial, however, are extremely small and delicate.  To be honest, we were all wondering how it was engraved in the first place with a stencil, because the lines are so thin and the surface is so bumpy.  Any restoration work would have to be done by hand, without a stencil or mask.

 

 

THE PREVIOUS 'PAINT':

     When a headstone or memorial is engraved, the character can get 'lost' on the stone if some kind of 'paint' is not added for definition.  Light colored stones can sometimes pull off the look, but dark stones almost always need something added to the letter to make it stand out for readability.  The industry commonly uses a product called 'highlight.'  It is similar to paint, but is really a thin pigment.  It is meant to produce a 'steeled' effect.  i.e., the letters should be readable yet appear to be a part of the stone.  Many people don't even know that highlight has been applied.  In the case of the NEHM, we believe that highlight was originally used, as that was the industry standard.

     Most headstone and most memorials stand up over time just fine with highlight.  But the NEHM is a walkway with thousands of feet walking on the letters every year.  The letters are engraved and horizontal, so rain, snow, ice, salt, and dirt get trapped inside.  Headstones don't suffer this problem.  In some characters, the highlight was completely gone.  Most were just so faded that they too were not readable.

     As some letters faded, the CJP tried to maintain the site by spot-painting.  As you can imagine, letters did not match now.  Also, on some of the upright stones, the highlight hadn't really faded, but it had never been quite bright enough to read the letters.  Highlight, the industry standard for headstones, was used, but another option, monument paint, would have been a better choice to make the letters 'pop.'  So the CJP hired me to clean, restore, and make the letters pop.

 

My technique?

Remove all previous highlight or paint.

Add four or five coats of monument paint.

Remove paint overage (capillary action causes this in the many cracks and fissures around each letter) with solvent and Q-tip.

Inspect each letter with magnifying glass for drying holes (pinpoint holes formed in the natural drying process).

Touch up drying holes with paint.