Author: John Cotey

It was as a budding photographer, and through a camera lens, that Andrew Lumish first noticed the mold and dirt covering the headstones he was taking pictures of in Oaklawn, Tampa’s oldest cemetery. He was particularly struck by the grime that obscured the memorials to fallen veterans, to the point where you could no longer make out their names. Lumish says he was moved by the thought that they had not only been forgotten, but that their marble and granite shrines had fallen into such disrepair.

So, with a handful of brushes, some water and D/2 Biological Solution — the only product approved for use in our national cemeteries — Lumish did something about it.

He started cleaning them, taking every Sunday to do so, and sharing his work on Facebook and Instagram. What began as the act of a good samaritan evolved into Lumish developing a cult-like social media following as “The Good Cemeterian.”

“It bothered me that many of the military markers were neglected for decades, if not for more than a century,’’ Lumish says. “I thought this would be a good way to honor our veterans, many who have just been forgotten.”

The 46-year-old Land O’Lakes resident, who owns his own cleaning business, Lumish tackled his newfound calling with vigor. He slowly perfected his trade, tombstone by tombstone, with some restorations taking 20 minutes, while others have taken months.

“It’s kind of an art form,’’ Lumish says. “It all depends on the complexity of the monument. Some have lots of nooks and crannies, and they require tooth brushes, Q-tips, whatever it takes.”

WFTS-TV, Ch. 28, the local ABC affiliate, did a small segment on Lumish in 2015 — he jokes that it was between a “Dirty Dining” segment and the weather — and it went viral, with more than 30 million online views.

Lumish shared his story with a raptured gathering at the New Tampa Rotary Club’s breakfast on Jan. 6. Club member Craig Miller had seen Lumish featured on “CBS Sunday Morning” last November — Miller says he and his wife Dee always tape the show and watch it after church — and reached out to him to be a featured speaker for the club..

“He had some really interesting stories,’’ Miller says. “He was great.”

Lumish, who says he has cleaned roughly 800 headstones and monuments of military veterans from the Civil, Spanish American, Korean, Vietnam and two World Wars, doesn’t just do restorations — he includes stories about the people buried beneath them to complement his before-and-after photos.

His most recent restorations were for World War I veteran Milton Payne Turner, who died in 1963 in a nursing home, and his son, Milton Owen Turner, who preceded his father in death when he was killed in WWII by the Nazis, just 23 days before Adolf Hitler committed suicide.

Lumish shares details of the men’s lives  on his Facebook page (search: TheGoodCemeterian), and his posts have been shared, liked and commented on tens of thousands of times. He estimates he reaches roughly 400,000 people a week (or more than 20 million a year) through social media.

Lumish started on his path to becoming the Good Cemeterian in the Lutz cemetery, where he returned the luster to a monument honoring a Civil War veteran.

“I never thought about it, I just wanted to give respect back,’’ he says. “Once I became better (at it), I took on bigger projects.”

One such bigger project involved a 10-foot-tall monument to two Tampa brothers, ages 16 and 14, who died in 1891. The story goes, the older brother goaded the other, who couldn’t swim, into removing his flotation device. But, once it was removed, and the older brother realized the mistake, they both drowned while he tried to save his younger brother.

“Some of the stories are sad,’’ says Lumish, who has been lauded by the Department of Veteran Affairs and other organizations for his efforts.

Lumish has an assistant, Jen Armbruster, who helps research the stories, and uses a number of online geneaology accounts to dig into fallen soldiers’ backgrounds in great detail. He often includes photos of his subjects when they are available, and even researches unmarked graves he has restored, to unlock the past.

“We try to tell their entire life stories,’’ says Lumish, who says he spent most of his adult life in corporate America before discovering a knack for photography. “I’ve always loved history, and this has allowed me to tell stories. It can be like finding a treasure.”

People from across the globe have shown their appreciation. Lumish says he gets thousands of messages from relatives and friends of those he features, and he says schools have contacted him about having their students do something similar for projects in their classes.

Lumish may be cleaning the surfaces of monuments, but he is only scratching the surface of what he hopes to accomplish. He has a number of projects in the pipeline as he continues to tackle lost history, one grimy tombstone at a time.

“I love doing it, I love telling stories,’’ he says. “In a world bombarded with negativity, this is something positive. It’s just a personal thing for me, but it has struck a nerve across the globe. There is no better feeling.”

You can follow The Good Cemeterian at Facebook.com/TheGoodCemeterian and on Instagram at instagram.com/thegoodcemeterian.