BRISTOW -- The woman, standing over a grave, wept sincere tears. Delores Siefken, visiting her parents' adjacent plots, discovered why.

The bereaved woman mourned a loved one and the fact the person was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery.

"She stood and cried because it looked bad out here. Aleece and I decided this was it. We were going to have to do something," Siefken says.

Aleece Beadle and Siefken have known each other a long time. They were classmates many years ago and, in a sense, grew old alongside the cemetery.

The women formed a committee with other like-minded volunteers who remember Decoration Day. The forerunner to Memorial Day fell on May 30 no matter the day of the week until 1968.

Decoration Day was an occasion to honor loved ones lost and deceased veterans. Visitors clipped flowers, some growing wild in the ditch in front of Oak Hill Cemetery, to lay on graves. Peonies. Snowballs. Bridal wreath. Bluebells. Violets.

"We didn't go to greenhouses. There was no such thing as greenhouses, and it was before artificial flowers," committee member Frances Ebling says.

The group wanted to address Oak Hill's sorry condition.

"The last 15 years it's been very neglected," Beadle says.

The first burial in Oak Hill happened in 1861. James Buchanan was president, and Iowa had been a state for only 15 years. The Civil War, eventual inspiration for Decoration Day, was under way.

In 1883 -- a year before Iowans dedicated the Capitol in Des Moines -- organizers established the Oak Hill Cemetery Association to manage the grounds. By then, 100 plots already were filled.

The cemetery now features more than 1,000 known graves. There are others, however, including many under an antique fence near the gravel road.

"There's burials there. But we don't know who's there," Beadle says.

Initially, association members solicited donations annually to sustain the cemetery. Decades later they collected $50 per lot and invested the money, using interest generated each year for expenses.

"That worked for a while," Beadle says.

Eventually, though, rising costs outpaced income. The association's coffers dried up. Lilac bushes grew without restraint, and some tombstones disappeared under the foliage. Trees and shrubs crowded boundary lines that separated hallowed ground from adjacent fields.

The volunteers set out to reclaim the seven-acre cemetery in rural Butler County. For their first project, committee members envisioned a small building to shelter a directory with a map of plots and lists of names.

"A lot of people said, 'Well, I don't know why I should contribute to that when the grounds are a mess.' That was a legitimate complaint, I guess," Beadle says.

Nevertheless, a capital campaign generated $7,500 for the project, drawing donations from 80 individuals and businesses. The committee broke ground in July last year, and the brick structure was finished by August.

Not satisfied, the group turned its attention to the cemetery's other troubling features and applied for grants.

"In February we couldn't believe our eyes. We'd gotten $8,000 from the Black Hawk County Gaming Association," Beadle says.

The cash, along with about $2,800 in additional grants, is funding work to clear boundary lines, replace fences and straighten tombstones.

Committee members consider the work personal business. Each volunteer has a connection to Oak Hill.

Scrubbing lichens off tombstones. Picking up pinecones. Setting things in respectful order.

"It was important to me. I'm going to be buried here, and I have a lot of relatives buried here," Beadle says.

Aunts. Uncles. Her parents. Her husband's parents.

One stone is for her grandfather, Andrew McNelis. An Irish immigrant, McNelis served with Company A of the 147th Illinois Infantry during the Civil War.

He and other veterans like him inspired Gen. John Logan in 1868. Through General Order No. 11, the commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic directed comrades to decorate the graves of "soldiers, sailors and marines who united to suppress the late rebellion … "

"Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of springtime; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor … ," Logan wrote.

"We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance," he added.

Gen. Logan also issued a challenge to contemporaries and to those who would follow.

"Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic."

Contact Dennis Magee at (319) 291-1451 or dennis.magee@wcfcourier.com.