Some people spend their days off on the beach, watching movies, catching up on sleep. But one guy from Land o’ Lakes, Florida, only has Sundays off, and he spends most of them paying homage to the veterans buried at the Lutz Cemetery and others in the area. Andrew Lumish is a self-employed carpet cleaner, and Sunday is his only day off.
Good Cemeterian
He doesn’t do it for attention, though recently he’s gotten a lot of it. Someone called him a “good cemeterian.” Most of the time he’s alone at the cemetery, though since people started learning about Lumish, his story has spread.
Lumish calls himself a history buff. He’s researched lost veterans who have served in conflicts dating back to the Civil War. "These aren't just stones sitting in a cemetery in Florida. These are real people…” And Lumish doesn’t want them to be forgotten.
“It’s something that I feel I should do to give them the proper respect for fighting for our country,” he told reporters. He added, he’s aware that they may no longer have living family members to care for the headstones. He’s aware that most people have other priorities. But this is important to him. “Quite honestly, I like to do this. I think about their families and what they might’ve talked about at the time. I think about their lives. The legality’s a little tricky,” he says.
“I do get funny looks from people sometimes,” he says. He sees stones commemorating service in the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I and World War II, and more recent wars. While cleaning the gravestone of one veteran, a 19 year old named Alvin Goodwin, killed in Vietnam, “to me, he’s frozen in time. My son is older than Alvin Goodwin when he was killed in Vietnam in 1967.”
“The tombstones themselves are typically in poor condition,” he said. Sometimes the grave stones are so dirty they can barely be read. He lovingly cleans them up and takes a few moments to think about the person buried there, who gave his life for the rest of us. In the two years he’s been doing it, he says he’s never been turned away. In that time, he estimates he’s cleaned up about 250 stones. “I may be trespassing, but it’s a good kind of trespassing. And I’ll take that all day. If they can put their lives on the line to fight for our country, this is the least that I can do.”
Before he began, Lumish researched the best cleaning products to use on limestone, slate, marble and granite markers, and he brings his own cleaning products. With his story on the TV news and on Facebook, thousands of people have been inspired to do the same. He had no idea how interesting people would find his story, but suddenly he’s being sought after by radio shows and TV news, and he’s a big hit on Facebook.
With more than 10,000 Facebook comments, the most common one is, “how can we do the same?” Lumish told reporters he’d like to see people across the country honor fallen veterans the same way, as long as it’s done correctly.
“You don’t want to use bleach you don’t want to use anything that’s going to damage a stone.” If you’re going to do this, he said, he recommends mild, environmentally safe products like Purple Magic or D2. He never uses a pressure washer or wire brush, but uses a brush with a soft touch, like nylon.
Although he admits he hasn’t always gotten permission to do this, he urges anyone interested in following his lead to get permission from the local cemetery management.
Teresa Ambord is a former accountant and Enrolled Agent with the IRS. Now she writes full time from her home, mostly for business, and about family when the inspiration strikes.