For the last decade or so, Bobby Brown spent part of each Memorial Day placing flags on the graves of his fellow veterans. He was a Green Beret in the 1960s who moved to Perry County in the 1980s and joined the Kentucky National Guard – as he says, three days after losing his job at a coal company.
He didn’t always like what he saw in the cemeteries.
“I about cried. It’s a shame. Everyone that's buried there is a hero. …”
Some headstones were covered in weeds or so badly faded they couldn’t be read; some were broken. Others didn’t have the metal marker all veterans are entitled to.
“A lot of people didn't know that they had to pay for the stand that this marker sits on, and the installation. And I've, I've inherited some monuments that fell into that category.”
Brown said he’s collected 30 of those and is making cement stands for each, then installing them at gravesites. One belonged to a veteran who’d worked with Brown at the coal job and whose son served in the National Guard.
“And when I went to that particular graveyard, I found that his dad did not have a marker, period. And I get up with him and started the process and the marker was just put in Monday, I believe.”
In the spring, Brown approached Perry County Public Library Director Sheila Lindsay with an ambitious proposal: to make and maintain a list of names and other information about every deceased veteran in the county.
“He was getting things like names, birth and death dates, what branch of the military they’re with, GPS coordinates, and then he was bringing them to me to the library.”
Lindsay, the daughter of a Vietnam War veteran she says didn’t receive the welcome home he deserved, signed on. Brown says he’s also had plenty of help from people like Army veteran Tim Cory, who heads Perry County Central High’s junior ROTC program, and National Guard vet David Akers; and Brown’s wife of 56 years, Katherine. Brown estimates they’ve searched more than 30 cemeteries.
“Does anyone ever look at you and say, why are you doing all this, you should be taking it easy?”
“My wife, every day.”
And what do you what do you tell her?
“Come on. Let's go to another one.”
From time to time, he brings their findings to the library.
“Then our genealogist here, Amber Deaton, she's been organizing the information into like a searchable database or document. And when we get new information, and you know, sometimes he's able to bring a couple names a week, and sometimes it's 40 or 50 names a week.”
Lindsay says she hopes the information will be available on the library website by next spring.
Brown says some of the 500-plus graves whose occupants he’s identified date back to the Civil War – both sides – and the Spanish-American War. Lindsay says establishing and maintaining the database is a big commitment – and a worthy one.
“Some of these headstones are just going to become rocks with no information on them as years go on. We can't even begin to, to grasp how many people this will probably benefit in future years. Because, you know, history tends to, if you don't record it, or find a way to keep it going it, you tend to lose it.”
Brown aims to cut those losses to a minimum, even if it costs him a bit of leisure time, as a great-grandson pointed out one day …
“We could be going fishing instead of doing this.”
“I said, ‘Well, we could, but this is more important.’”
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