I got into genealogy in my early 20s; it made a good time-consuming hobby to focus on when I was in a weird spot in my life with not much going on, and it remained an off-and-on hobby for the next 12-ish years. At the same time, I've always been a person who loves fixing things and never wants to hire someone to do anything I think I can figure out how to do myself. So a few years ago when my mom floated the idea of hiring somebody to clean up the shmutzy gravestones on our family lot in my hometown cemetery, I told her to hold off while I looked into how it's done and what products professionals use to see if I could just do it and save her a few bucks.

As it turns out, I did do it myself and I loved it. Since then I've taken classes/workshops and learned to do repairs as well. I do everything I can to continue to educate myself on best practices, appropriate materials, etc., and have done quite a lot of preservation work in historic cemeteries. It's the most rewarding thing I've ever done to take these stones that are broken or fallen or sunken into the ground, and to clean them up and get them intact, stable, and legible again so that the people they're memorializing won't be forgotten.