Kyger honors ancestors
BY MIKE HELENTHALCommercial-News
DANVILLE — Christmas is about the last season you’d expect to be thinking about tombstones.
But that’s what was on Paul and Marlene Campbell’s minds when they nominated Max Kyger as a Christmas Angel.
After watching him toil through the summer repairing a family gravesite that dates to the early 1800s, the Danville couple thought he deserved a little recognition.
“It was really neglected and it had been overtaken with weeds,” said Marlene, describing the condition of Lamb Cemetery near East Winter Avenue. “He just took it upon himself.”
She said the cemetery holds several generations of area families, including descendents of theirs. In fact, the couple and other relatives of those buried at Lamb have spent years trying to maintain the cemetery themselves.
But the Campbells are both nearly 80 now and had all but given up on the gravesites ever looking respectful again.
She said, during the course of the summer Kyger mowed, cut back 5-foot weeds and generally cleaned the entire property, which contains 80 gravesites.
“Several people have tried, but you don’t realize how much work that is,” she said. “We were just amazed at what he did. He even took some of the broken stones back to his house to cement them back together.”
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