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Lake McMurray family cleans up headstones

Skagit Valley Herald - 3/23/2019

March 23-- Mar. 23--BURLINGTON -- Those passing by local cemeteries over the course of a day in early March may have caught a glimpse of three men cleaning headstones.

They worked as long as they could.

"We would have kept going, but we ran out of light," Vince Linnell said.

On Wednesday at Green Hills Memorial Cemetery in Burlington, Linnell and his sons Chris, 18, and Vinnie, 21, talked about their work while looking for more headstones to clean.

For the Lake McMurray family, cleaning headstones -- particularly those of veterans -- is their way of giving back.

Vince Linnell, an Army veteran, said he got the idea to clean headstones after seeing a Facebook post about a man who was doing the same in Florida.

He rented pressure washing equipment, and he and his sons got to work.

Their first stop was the Veterans of Foreign Wars wall in Burlington, which bore the name of Vince Linnell's step-brother, Dennis Linnell, who died in combat during the Vietnam War.

After cleaning the wall, the Linnells moved on to Green Hills cemetery, Union Cemetery in Sedro-Woolley and Hawthorne Funeral Home & Memorial Park in Mount Vernon.

Over the course of the day, Vince Linnell said his family saw hundreds of veteran headstones that had suffered years of neglect, many of them completely obscured by dirt and moss.

Some headstones were so neglected the pressure washer wasn't enough, so Chris Linnell and Vinnie Linnell would get down and scrub.

"It makes me sad to see the neglect of veteran graves," Chris Linnell said.

By sundown, the Linnells had restored about 40 headstones.

Since that day, Vince Linnell said he's been trying to organize a work party through American Legion Memorial Post 91 in Burlington to get more people out to clean headstones.

The goal is to spread out to cemeteries throughout the county before Memorial Day, he said.

Chris Linnell and Vinnie Linnell are all for it.

"It's my way of giving back to those who sacrificed for this country," Vinnie Linnell said.

-- Reporter Leah Allen: 360-416-2149, lallen@skagitpublishing.com, Twitter: @Leah_SVH

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(c)2019 the Skagit Valley Herald (Mount Vernon, Wash.)

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