Thank you so much for sharing your experience! It warms my heart to look across an old cemetery and see clean veteran headstones standing out in brilliant white. If we work together, we can clean every veteran headstone in America by Memorial Day. And yes, it is an amazing experience to honor a forgotten American hero.

❤

Just do it clandestinely .

Hello Chris. Unfortunately, the challenges you're experiencing in gaining permission to clean veteran headstones is common all across America, because veteran graves have slowly fallen off the list of priorities. I get the same thing every time I call a city or county government to ask permission to clean veteran headstones in cemeteries where THEY should be maintaining veteran graves as a part of their $775 million annual budget. I have much work to accomplish but on my list is an initiative to create a job title of Cemetery Sexton in EVERY city and county in every state within the United States. That person's #1 priority will be to make sure every veteran grave is maintained as sacred ground. The rest of their professional capacity will be dedicated to maintaining every aspect of every cemetery within their jurisdiction. Just keep working at it. If they don't respond after your best effort, call your local tv station to do a story about it and reference ByMemorialDay.com. I've spent the past 20 months blazing a path through all the excuses. The path to clean veteran headstones is now clear and wide open. Now it's simply a matter of raising awareness.

@@theyfaceeast thank you much for your words and what you're doing. I will be persistent in this cause ands I'm glad to know that someone else is having the same struggles as I am. God bless!

Can you just call directly to the cemetery?

The Department of Veterans Affairs via their National Cemetery Administration does replace damaged and worn veteran headstones and grave markers. Google VA Form 40-1330 which is the application for a veteran headstone. As a family member, you should be able to order the replacement headstone as a Next of Kin. There are three signatures required on the application. First, you the applicant. Second, the manager of the cemetery. Third, the company that will received the stone shipment from the V.A., deliver the stone to the burial site, and set the stone properly. This third signature is referred to as the Consignee. The Consignee is a local monument headstone company. Sometimes the Consignee will charge a fee, but sometimes the Consignee provides these services free of charge for veterans. The V.A. has a process you must follow when disposing of the old headstone. The application is I think four pages long, but three of the pages are simply instructions and examples. Regarding the veteran's wife, you can discuss that with the V.A. and/or the Consignee monument company. I have seen where people purchase grandma's stone identical in shape to the veteran's stone, so there are two stones side by side. In National Cemeteries, the veteran and their spouse are stacked in one grave, so the headstone has the veteran etched on one side and the spouse etched on the other. From what you described, I think a separate headstone for grandma sounds like a good idea. Of course, you will have to pay for grandma's headstone and the cost of setting it. I just paid $695 to have my grandparents' private headstone removed, taken to the monument company, etched with my tribute to each of them, and then reset back at the cemetery. They were important to me and priceless, so I did not hesitate to spend the $695 to make sure their descendants 500 years from now will learn just how special they were. I'm currently ordering veteran headstones for my ancestors in my family tree and three are in process. One is being set in a Kentucky municipal cemetery free of charge by cemetery staff. One is being set on the grounds of a state university at a cost of $250 to the school. And, one is being set in Georgia by a monument company free of charge. Just complete the form as best you can and submit it to the V.A. via fax or snail mail. They do not accept emailed applications at this time. They will contact you directly if they need more information from you. In my cases, they have called me and they have emailed me. The V.A. staff members are very kind and helpful.

They're both quatanary ammounium compounds so they perform a similar function (removing biological growth). Though with Wet & Forget I recommend wetting the stone and removing as much as growth as possible with water and a plastic or wooden spudger and then once the stone is dry apply the wet and forget do one coat and scrub with a soft brush wait about 10-15 minutes apply a second coat and let it go. The rain and natural elements will take care of it over time. Wet & Forget is a slower process but it's a lot more economically viable than D2 though D2 is preferred by preservationists because it is a faster acting product and it's a known standard for years.

*Note wet and forget must be applied on a dry day. It needs atleast 5 hours of dry weather for the product to set in the stone. It's best to do it in the morning or evening as during the day the daytime heat will evaporate the product faster.

I made the flag holders myself using half inch schedule 40 PVC pipe. I just purchased 10ft sticks at ACE Hardware and cut them into 15 inch segments. If you have the budget, really nice metal flag holders are available on Amazon.com designed for Navy, Army, etc. or wartime service such as WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc. I buy my 8" x 12" flags on Amazon.com. I prefer the flags that are stitched on all sides including stitched around the wooden stick prior to the staples holding the flag to the wooden stick. It's hard to tell in the photos whether the flag is stitched around the wooden stick. 8" x 12" is the standard size grave flag used at National Cemeteries.

@@theyfaceeast thank you for your response.. would like to do this in california how or where do I start?

@@judynajar3678 Start at ByMemorialDay.com. I've posted several of my videos there. Also, I have a link to the protocol issued by the National Cemetery Administration. After that, search for Cemeteries located in your local county at Findagrave.com. Then visit those cemeteries to see if any veteran headstones need a proper cleaning. The local environment will determine how much biological growth accumulates on veteran headstones. I've traveled as far west as Nevada. New Mexico is so dry that the stones I found were all perfectly clean. However, you could tell nobody was tending to the graves, because the weeds were dried up thick atop the grave.

I personally sprayed one coat of water on 88 clean upright white marble veteran headstones using one gallon of water. Therefore, the maximum number of headstones a gallon of D/2 will treat is 88. However, biological growth on a stone acts as a sponge, so it will take more product to thoroughly wet the surface of a dirty stone compared to a clean stone. That being said, I estimate 60 as a reasonable number of dirty stones per gallon of D/2.

@@theyfaceeast Thank you so much on getting back to me, I really appreciate it. 🤓🤓

I've commented on this topic many times. The document folks reference when it comes to D/2 Biological Solution is the NCPTT document about headstone cleaning produced by the National Parks and National Cemetery Administration. The document names about three brand name cleaning agents including D/2, but that sentence ends with something like "or any cleaning agent containing a quaternary ammonium compound as its active ingredient." The important point is that the active ingredient is in fact a quaternary ammonium compound. I am a fan of D/2 and use it most of the time when I clean veteran headstones. However, just because D/2 is listed by name in the NCPTT document does not mean it is the only product that will safely clean a veteran headstone. Based on my request, the National Cemetery Administration produced a first ever best practices protocol for how to clean government-furnished headstones. They specifically name Wet & Forget as an example of a cleaning agent which contains a quaternary ammonium compound as its active ingredient. I also had them include plain old H2O water as an approved cleaning agent! Some people can't afford D/2 and some people can't get their hands on D/2, so those folks desiring to clean veteran headstones need safe alternatives. Now they have them.

This is the link to the veteran headstone cleaning protocol issued by the National Cemetery Administration: www.cem.va.gov/docs/factsheets/Cleaning_Headstones_Markers.pdf There are many videos and web pages on the internet with countless methods for cleaning headstones, but in this protocol we now have a standard for best practices pertaining to the cleaning of government furnished veteran headstones and grave markers which REMAIN FEDERAL PROPERTY.

Past Preservation....is the KZfaq channel. That fellow does some correct and some not.