One Man’s Monumental Undertaking for History

The Civil War goes on for Gene-o Platt.

For the past three years, he has set up his tools at the Santa Ana Cemetery and gone about restoring the markers of the 483 graves of Civil War veterans. Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, it doesn’t matter. He’s out there with his drills, brushes and sealer, scraping off the dirt, the fungus and the lichen from the Georgia marble tombstones of John Purtteman, Company L, 7th Illinois Calvary, or Capt. LaFayette Harlan, Company B, 9th Kentucky Infantry.

He might be out there just a couple of hours a day, maybe 14, depending on how he feels, bringing history back to life. Leaning on his sheepskin-covered footstool, he painstakingly brushes layer upon layer of white-pigmented sealer--”don’t call it paint”--until he has turned the monuments--”don’t call them tombstones”--white, with the lettering and the base in gold.

It’s more than a full-time job, but he’s not paid for the work and has spent thousands of his own dollars. It’s just something he thinks has to be done. “I think the Lord sent me here because no one could do this for three years without cracking up,” he said.

The Civil War was not an obsession of Platt’s, not like it is to the buffs who collect memorabilia or dress up in blue and gray uniforms to reenact the battles of Shiloh or Bull Run. His closest connection to the war was that his grandmother’s house in Bunker Hill, Md., was a stop years earlier on the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves.

As a kid growing up in Granite, Md., he spent hours watching a tombstone maker who worked nearby, learning how to produce them and perhaps whetting his appetite for what was to come.

He served seven years in the Air Force as a radar technician and later owned a grocery store and a business that remodeled restaurants.

Ask his age, and the answer is “over 50.” He’s not old, he says, he’s “mature.” How did he get the name Gene-o? “People just call me that.”

Platt discovered the deteriorating gravestones when he and his grandson visited the grave of Platt’s wife, Jean, who died in 1998. Some of the vintage stones were so beaten up they looked as though shotgun pellets had pummeled them.

“When I saw these monuments, it just hit me: It’s such a crime to see our history go,” he said. “Ninety percent of the kids don’t even know what the Civil War was about.”

Ohio Vet’s Headstone Was the First Restored

Without asking, Platt refurbished the monument of Isaac McBurney, Company H, Ohio Infantry, 1840-1920, whose grave was not far from Jean’s. He figured if the cemetery authorities didn’t like it, he could easily remove the white and gold sealer with solvent.

He showed his handiwork to Bill Stetler, then the cemetery manager, who gained approval from his bosses for the Santa Ana resident to continue.

Platt works on 10 monuments at a time, not only sprucing up the stones, but refurbishing the silver stars with the letters GAR emblazoned on them, for Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veterans organization. “This one here probably took a month,” he says. “You stay on one monument too long, you don’t care. It gets the best of you.” Each time he returns, he sees something new to be done.

He works only on government-issue Union markers, not those of the Confederate soldiers, who, he points out, lost the war, after all.

He has received awards from Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove, and from the Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society, but the praise has not been unanimous. Some people have complained that Platt’s efforts will cause the stones to deteriorate, and others think they should remain in their natural state.

“I’ve been concerned that paint is putting the longevity of those stones at risk,” said Lou Carlson of neighboring Fairhaven Memorial Park and Mortuary, who voiced his concern to heritage organizations. “But his heart, obviously, is in the right place.”

Carlson, a member of the Historical Preservation Society, was won over and among the board members who voted to recognize Platt.

Things heated up so much that supporters gathered more than 200 signatures on a petition supporting his work this year.

“Here’s a fellow that instead of everybody complaining about what they’re seeing--and not doing anything--has taken it upon himself with his body and money to do something very nice,” said Ed Cote of the Orange County Historical Commission.

Bob Lowe, head of the state chapter of Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, said he knew of no one who was performing work similar to Platt’s. When his organization learns of markers that have deteriorated, it receives new ones from the federal government.

Monument to the Unknown Dead

Late last week, Platt had turned away from the monuments to finish work on the 8-foot high memorial “To The Unknown Dead of the Civil War” at the cemetery entrance in time for Memorial Day.

Platt sat on a makeshift scaffold, a paint brush in his fleshy hand. His green apron was splattered with white and gold and a blue Air Force cap sat atop his head. His tanned arms attest to his hours in the sun.

His drills and bits sat on the ground behind him as he leaned forward to swab another coat of sealer onto the monument. He goes through three or four grinding bits a week to define the recessed letters.

He had painted the bald eagle atop the monument gold, with a white head. He had replaced a missing corner and a friend repaired the steps leading up to the monument, which was dedicated in 1915. The choice of colors for the eagle wasn’t easy. He tried copper, silver and white, but none of them worked.

“I prayed to the Lord to show me the right way,” he said. “It just came.”

Platt takes a break and ambles slowly through the cemetery, pointing out his work and marveling at the stories the monuments tell. He greets the groundsmen he passes by name and waves at those in the distance.

He comes to the grave of Sgt. Elijah E. Henry, Company A, 54th Indiana Infantry. He cut his hand three times restoring that marker. “I told him, ‘Elijah, you cut me again, I’m not going to do your monument.’ ”

He stops at the tombstone of C.L. Hewitt, Company I, 7th Infantry, Minnesota and points out a few extra flourishes on the lettering. “Can you tell I got carried away a little?”

He walks to the marker of JNO. , Corp’l, 19th Infantry Iowa. He was born in 1855, which would have made him 11 years old maximum at the end of the war.

Platt has 35 tombstones to complete. He’s a modest man who insists on giving credit to those who have helped him, keeping his spirits high, helping him pack up and sometimes bringing food, even Christmas dinner.

When he’s finished at the Santa Ana Cemetery, Platt says he’s done. “I hope this will start a copycat situation.”

Maybe, he says, he’ll leave a note explaining how to do it.

But it’s hard to see him quitting. After all, although his goal was to refurbish the Civil War markers, when he spotted six markers from World War I veterans, well, they were in such bad shape, he just had to fix them.