Paul Craycraft turned 84 last Monday, November 4, 2002. His younger brother Bill Craycraft will celebrate his 80th birthday on December 27th. We met them at the Bethel Cemetery east of Ridge Farm, Illinois at noon on Saturday. Last spring, while we were searching out Civil War Veterans’ stones for our Between Brothers project, we had stumbled across their grandfather’s grave. We had no idea that anyone in the family was resting there. The monument was in bad shape. The ground had settled unevenly in the 90 years since Leander Craycraft was buried. The large block of limestone that formed the base of the monument had tilted until the plinth and lectern shaped riser of the monument had been tumbled down and fallen to the ground.

We telephoned Bill to tell him of our discovery. Until that call he had not known where his grandfather had been buried. We told him that we had searched the area around the grave for evidence that his grandmother, Mary E. Lewis, had been buried near her husband. Our search had been unsuccessful.

A few weeks later we met Bill and Madeline for Sunday lunch in Montezuma, Indiana and showed him the way to Bethel. We stood the fallen main block of the monument up to walk it over next to the base, thinking to protect the fragile dense marble from damage caused by collisions with the mower as the caretaker cut the grass. As we lifted the stone to upright we made another discovery. The side of the stone was inscribed with his Grandmother’s name and the date of her death, August 23, 1896.

Bill started to figure out just how we might straighten the base and re-erect the stone. This Saturday was the day we would find out if his plan would work. He had built a derrick of sorts, a framework of two by sixes from which he suspended a motor hoist. A semi-driver’s ratcheted load strap would go around the stone to attach to the chain of the motor hoist.

The first step was to dig out the base and lever the base up to tip it out of the depression in which it had settled. A wooden framework serving as both a form and support for the base was built and then filled with cement. Another session with the lever tipped the base back on to the framework that now held it level.

Bill mixed a batch of mortar and the plinth was manhandled into its proper position. It was time to test Bill’s device. It took him about 15 minutes to assemble the framework and bind the load strap around the stone. Paul worked the motor hoist while we all wondered whether the rig would hold the weight. It did. Bill applied more mortar to the top of the plinth and Paul lifted the main stone up with the motor hoist until we could maneuver it and lower it onto the base.

While Bill and Paul disassembled the derrick and loaded it into Bill’s van, we cleaned the stone and put the gear we had brought back in the truck. In just over an hour and fifteen minutes their grandsons had restored the monument to Leander and Mary as it had been 90 years before. It was time for one last picture Paul and Bill posed next to the re-erected stone and a bit of family history had been restored for generations to come.


Click here to View the Picture Alum of the project.