The graves of husbands, wives, children and veterans from both World Wars saw sunlight for the first time in years Saturday after volunteers cleared the prickly brush and weeds at the Elmwood Cemetery.

For 82-year-old Doris Walker, the volunteers were a blessing.

“My mother, father, brother, half-brother, grandmother and husband are all buried there,” Walker said. “I’ve never seen so much help.”

Walker had previously attempted to clean the cemetery with the help of Darrell White and Wayman Newell, the Lauderdale County supervisor of District 2. White even found and uncovered the grave of Walker’s brother, Charles Young.

“It’s great to see these kids out here,” Walker said, pointing to a group of volunteers from the Boys and Girls Club of East Mississippi. “It really is a blessing.”

Newell and Meridian Ward 2 representative Tyrone Johnson coordinated Saturday’s event in hopes to clear the cemetery, at the corner of 10th Avenue and 24th Street, so it could be regularly maintained. 

“It’s easier to cut grass than cut trees,” Johnson said. “It’s worse than I thought it was. It’s too big of a job for one person, it’s even too big of a job for 10 people.”

Newell and Johnson listed groups they thought could volunteer to clear the cemetery regularly: military groups, Boy Scouts, fraternities, sororities and other youth groups.

“But family is number one,” Newell said. “If each family would do their own plot it wouldn’t get like this.”

Volunteers included members of the Meridian Fire Department’s Station 5 and the Boys and Girls Club of East Mississippi and tools ranged from weed eaters to hatchets for the tough bushes growing on top of the graves. 

Lacedric Lewis, a teen with the Boys and Girls Club, said he thought he had family buried at Elmwood but hadn’t discovered them yet. 

“I came to help out the community,” Lewis said. “We’re in the community and we should help out.”

Lewis, and other teens, said they’d be willing to volunteer monthly to help fight back the brush and clear the cemetery.

“We’ll come here monthly, quarterly, whatever,” Johnson said. “So it doesn’t get like this again.”