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Spring Clean-up at the Johnson Cemetery

             On Sunday morning, May 1^{st (2005)} nine members of the Wellsville Exchange Club came together as volunteers with rakes in hand to clean-up one of Wellsville’s oldest and historical cemeteries.  (more.....Johnson Cemetery)

            The Johnson Cemetery is situated behind the Jones Memorial hospital and is bordered by the hospital’s parking lot. The cemetery holds much of Wellsville’s heritage.  Over the years this lovely cemetery with its beautiful old maple trees has fallen into disrepair.  The “Flood of 1972” removed a portion of the cemetery at the same time as a wing of the hospital was lost.  Funding and interest in the upkeep of the grounds over the past few years has been poor. Many of the stones are broken and have become unreadable.  

            As a community service the Exchange Club decided to lend their support to help restore part of the village’s history to an acceptable maintenance level. The task was quite large. Limbs were down, trees and bushes needed to be pruned and trimmed. There was litter to pick-up and debris to gather. Then the raking and mowing.  The final touch was re-propping the broken stones, so they are less likely to accumulate any more damage.  The Johnson Cemetery now looks like a well cared for park, as it should for our ancestors to “rest in peace”. 

The Exchange Club is a group of men and women working together to make our communities better places to live through programs of services in Americanism, Community Service, Youth Activities and its national project, the Prevention of Child Abuse.

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