Missouri Western students, alumni partner for Mount Mora preservation

By Jazmine Knight

A group of volunteers spent Friday afternoon cleaning up headstones at Mount Mora Cemetery and forming connections to local history.

Kurt Jordan, a cemetery preservationist, is a St. Joseph native who also attended Missouri Western and now serves on the foundation. He’s been in the preservation business for several years now and said he’s infatuated with it. He went on to talk about the need for cemetery preservation throughout the U.S.

“There are so many old cemeteries, not just Mount Mora, but across the country that are fallen into disrepair,” Jordan said. “People have gotten older, they’ve moved away, and they just need attention. And it’s terrific to have younger folks like the Missouri Western students becoming involved.”

When it comes to the Missouri Western partnership, Jordan said that’s the power behind it and it means the world to him.

“From a historical perspective, they would enjoy it and make a connection with just a crown jewel here in the St. Joseph community of Mount Mora,” he said.

Jordan said he thinks the experience will leave an impact on the volunteers.

“The things they’re learning will stick. And I believe they’ll want to come back and continue to do this sort of work,” he said. “Not necessarily only here at Mount Mora, but maybe there’s a family cemetery, an area that needs to be cleared off.”

As far as the chemicals used, Jordan said they don’t use household cleaners, and instead use D/2 cleaner, which is approved for monument cleaning. It’s non-harmful and not abrasive. They also use soft bristle brushes to err on the side of caution.

Jordan said doing this work is incredibly rewarding. He enjoys honoring those who came before him.

“And frankly, I just feel we have an obligation to preserve that,” he said.

Kim Sigrist, director of the Center for Service at Missouri Western, said the goal of the program is to engage students in volunteering. She hopes to raise awareness about the cemetery’s history and restore a sense of pride within the community. She said students love the partnership with Jordan.

“This is an avenue for them to learn and experience different aspects of our community,” Sigrist said.

“I can guarantee that 99% of our students would have not had any knowledge or interest or even knew that this was a path, a cemetery was a place they could volunteer,” she continued.

Many students had never visited the cemetery prior to the preservation event. However, they immediately saw an impact.

“I hope they are able to come back over the coming months to see what they did and the progress and the improvement of the stones,” Sigrist said.

For Keegan Yancey, a biology major at Missouri Western, it was his first time doing something like this but he said he thinks it’s pretty cool.

“They’re all green and we can’t even see who these people really are. But once the chemicals start kind of working and the D/2 and you start brushing away, it’s really, it’s really something,” he said.

He talked about how the gravestone he worked on didn’t even have a visible name.

“We could barely make out like a ‘d-l-e’ at the very end. But then now that we’ve gotten to brushing, we’ve uncovered that their last name was Riddle. And so you had Benjamin Riddle,” Yancey said.

Once they uncovered that information, they were determined to learn more. Using online resources, they were able to find out when and how the person passed.

“Whether it’s famine, it’s diseases and things like that, it kind of gets you a little bit closer to that history because you just hear about it, you read about it in textbooks,” Yancey said.

“There’s a bunch of different graves that offer the same thing. You just kind of feel a little bit more connection to that history through that,” he continued.

He said this is definitely something he could see himself doing again.

“It’s one of those activities that I can just kind of lose myself in. It’s just varied,” Yancey said. “I like those kinds of just repetitive things, but overall, it’s still very rewarding for what it is.”