MIAMI — An eighth grader is spending her after-school hours not with friends, but at a cemetery, cleaning veterans’ graves and working to preserve their stories.
Kassandra Seldin says she began noticing the condition of graves at Miami City Cemetery during her daily route to school.
“Every day I go to school near here I pass by the cemetery and it is just so mistreated,” she said.
Her project is part of her Girl Scout Silver Award, and over the past year she has worked to honor veterans buried there. With help from veterans and volunteers, Seldin identified and documented more than 1,700 graves at the cemetery.
“I think that it’s so wrong that these veterans served our country and helped us gain our freedom. They should be respected,” she said.
“It made me feel so happy that I could do something for someone else this special,” she added.
She worked alongside veterans and volunteers, including Lex Kruger Dobrota, a veteran and founder of the app “Badger,” which helps document and map graves.
“Seeing the other buried headstones that are underneath, buried underneath the surface of the ground, leaves covered up, grass growing, it really showed that we need to give a name to these forgotten military heroes buried in the cemetery,” Kruger Dobrota said.
Along with researching and documenting, Seldin also helped clean and care for headstones with volunteers, wiping away dirt and restoring names.
She also photographed each grave and recorded service information, building a digital map through the “Badger” app so families can more easily locate loved ones.
After more than a year of work, Seldin says this chapter is coming to a close, but the veterans she worked to honor will not be forgotten.
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