NMU students, faculty and staff spent their Saturday morning in the Ishpeming Cemetery working alongside each other and NMU President Chris Olsen to clean graves of Civil War veterans, the kickoff to a week-long series of events celebrating Olsen's upcoming Investiture as NMU's 19th president.
The service project was of particular importance to Olsen, a historian who specializes in the Civil War era. Olsen said while on roadtrips, he and his family would often stop for rest breaks at cemeteries, giving everyone a chance not just to stretch their legs but also to connect with the past. For Olsen, each gravestone tells a story.
“All you have to do is look at the name and the dates and then, for me as a historian, I think of what their lives might have been like, the change they saw,” Olsen said. “A lot of the people born in the era I research, the 1850s and '60s, if they survived, living into the 1920s and '30s they saw automobiles, airplanes – what an unbelievable amount of change to see in your life."
Associate Vice President for Northern Student Experience Jeff Korpi started the day with a short speech to the group of volunteers gathered at the cemetery, outlining the reasoning behind the event – a focus on Olsen's background as a historian of the Civil War era – information on three Civil War veterans buried there and a short recounting on the importance of Marquette County mining to the Union's Civil War efforts, with information provided by the Marquette Regional History Center and the Michigan Iron Industry Museum.
The three veterans highlighted by Korpi were Capt. Dr. E. W. Fiske, 1st Sgt. O. W. Doolittle and Cpl. Theodore M. Day. Fiske served in Company G of the 13th Massachusetts Infantry from 1862-1863 before coming to Ishpeming, where he worked as a dentist, artist and as Ishpeming's first librarian after the war. Doolittle came to Ishpeming in 1868 and became the local agent for the Chicago & North Western and Milwaukee railroads, as well as an agent for the American Express Company. He was active in the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans focused on comradery and community service. Day, who was wounded during the war, worked as a bookkeeper and cashier for Hill & Merryweather and held a similar position with Donaldson Brothers. He, too, was involved in the Grand Army of the Republic following his service in the war.
“I think that's what makes these three stories particularly interesting,” Korpi said. “They were soldiers and their lives of service continued here as neighbors and community members. More than a century later, we get to do one small thing today to help preserve their stories.”
NMU cheerleading coach Stacey Filizetti said she encouraged her students to participate in the event as a way to be involved in the community outside of an athletic event, which was how senior cyber security major and cheerleader Sean Urban found himself with a scrub brush in hand, removing moss from a veteran's gravestone in Ishpeming that morning.
“A lot of these gravestones haven't been touched in a long time and seeing them come back, moss-free again, is pretty nice,” Urban said.
Freshman cosmetology major Reese Martin, also a cheerleader, echoed those sentiments as she worked alongside Urban on that picturesque morning, with fall colors in full swing among the tree-filled cemetery.
“These people still mean a lot and they've done a lot for our country so showing that we care, that the community's here, is pretty big,” Martin said.
ROTC cadet Victoria Sloan, a freshman applied exercise physiology and kinesiology major, said she felt a similar need to help keep the memory of these veterans alive.
“I'm actually in ROTC at Northern, so I like the volunteer projects that help with veterans or are related to military service because that's something I'm going into and I'm passionate about,” Sloan said.
NMU Veteran Services Coordinator Mike Rutledge, along with his service dog, Quinn, was on hand to help oversee the project. Rutledge has done similar work over the years in cemeteries around Marquette County, coordinating gravestone cleanings with the NMU Student Veterans Association. He said he was pleasantly surprised to learn this was the service event planned for Investiture.
“I love doing this because I want to honor everybody who's served before me, particularly the people who have been gone for seven, eight generations and their families have been long gone, and nobody's taking care of their graves,” Rutledge said, an Army veteran with 22 years of service. “That means a lot to me. You're never forgotten if people say your name out, and that's what you do when you see these stones.”
The group cleaned roughly three dozen gravestones, including 13 of Civil War veterans, over the course of the morning, ensuring their names were once again visible to cemetery visitors.
Investiture celebrations continue throughout the week, leading into the official Investiture ceremony at 11 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 2. A full list of events can be found on NMU's Investiture website.
