By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

NAPLES — The upgrades at the very visible Naples Village Cemetery have hit a wall.

Literally, the stone wall surrounding the town cemetery has received a facelift during the past two weeks.

The Naples Cemetery Committee (NCC) used a portion of its budget to hire someone who does stone work, Scott Schrader, the owner of Maine Hardscape & Stone.

“Basically, it [the wall] needs a lot of pointing. I had to pick a lot of the work out of everything. I’m just repointing everything so that the mortar could hold it back together,” Schrader said. “It was really crumbling down the middle from the moisture getting into it so I’m sealing the holes as much as I can.”

NCC Chair Kathy Keinath shared something she learned about stonework.

Scott Schrader “was mentioning that it wasn’t necessarily that the wall was built incorrectly. But, over time, when it lost its cap, moisture was able to get down in there. Then, the cement did what cement does and it started to crumble,” Keinath said.

Schrader added, “Being close to the road with all the salt doesn’t help it any.”

“It is something that has to be maintained anyway. It is a stone wall. Nothing is permanent, especially if you aren’t going to tear it apart and start over so it lasts 50 years,” he said. 

“We are really doing patchwork technically. We are trying to do the best patchwork we can with the budget we have,” he said, adding, “I gave a little bit of a deal to make it happen. I am from around here. I grow up in East Sebago and went to Lake Region High School. I want to see it done.”

Many of the citizens who have pride in their community’s appearance will be happy to see it get done, too.

“It gets a lot of local attention because it is so visible,” Keinath said. “When we first started the restoration four years ago, people were just so appreciative. So the amount of positive comments we were getting were quickly followed up with, ‘What about the wall?’ ”

Finding the person to do upgrades on the stone wall was serendipitous.

“It took a long time to find someone who was willing to tackle the stone wall. We were very fortunate to find someone to do the work and do it well. I found out about his work when I was driving to pickleball, I saw his sign. Whenever I saw a sign, I put out a call and usually did not get a call back. Then, I got a call back,” Keinath said. “I started talking to people and they said yeah, ‘We know who he is. He does great work.’ ”

“It was really by happenstance” that the NCC located someone to do the stone wall, she said.

“He is doing meticulous work. He is dying the old cement to match the new,” she said.

Another piece of exciting news: when the improvement projects are wrapped up, maintenance will be the only continued cost. 

“We are almost to the point where the village cemetery will just be maintenance, yearly maintenance,” she said. 

“We’ve pretty well done the bulk of the headstones that had to be repaired. The iron fence in the front was repaired by my brother who lives in Pennsylvania,” she said.

“We couldn’t find any grants. The town doesn’t have a grant writer. The former town manager was John Hawley and Jim Grattelo was the chairman. Along with the two of them, the entire select-board was extremely supportive of our work. They gave me a budget of my own,” Keinath said. 

“Recently, I met with Jason Rogers, the new town manager. He is very supportive of our work in the cemetery. Instead of doing it piece by piece, he has encouraged us to get the entire wall done next year.”