At 10 a.m. on a recent Saturday morning, as the cars whizzed by on nearby U.S. 41, a small team of youngsters gathered around a folding table in a shelter at the center of the 115-year-old Lutz Cemetery.
Cemetery manager Toni Hedstrom laid out thin sheets of paper, tape, scissors and black chalk while explaining the day’s task.
“We are going to do monument etching. This is so cool, you guys. But first, when you get to your monument, you're probably going to have to wipe it down because it's going to be wet with dew.”
Nine kids, ages 6 to 13, clamored for their supplies.
“This is part of the Florida Legacy Project,” Hedstrom continued.
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“I know those of you who have someone assigned are doing some research and creating a history project for your adopted person here at Lutz Cemetery. So this is just one of the things we can do. We could do the etching on their gravestone, and you could keep that for your records.”
Eventually, Hedstrom told the kids, headstones wear down from time and the elements. These etchings may one day be the only record of what was once inscribed on them.
The Florida Legacy Project
Today’s headstone etchers are part of the first cohort of young historians researching the people buried here in the cemetery in Lutz, an “unincorporated census-designated place" in Hillsborough and south Pasco counties founded in the 1880s and sparsely populated until the middle of the next century.
Today, members of the American Legion Post 108 in Land O’ Lakes maintain and operate the cemetery, which began with the burial of a person known only as “Mr. Nims” around 1914.
His headstone is gone, and there’s very little known about his life. This project aims to ensure that no one else at the cemetery is lost to time.
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Photos, documents, interviews with living relatives, and even artifacts are helping student volunteers through the Boy Scouts and other youth organizations transform forgotten names and experiences into living stories.
These stories are being preserved online through the cemetery’s digital archive on its website, and also accessed through QR codes placed on headstones.
Hedstrom holds up one of the small, stainless steel tags from Life’s QR, a company founded by former celebrity portrait photographer Jennifer Blakeley.
“At the end of the project, we can put this right on the headstone, and anybody can scan that and see all about that person,” Hedstrom said.
Stewards of local history
Hedstrom said cemetery stewards have an obligation to not only care for the final resting places of the dead, but also to document their stories and help young people care about local history.
“When you're walking through the cemetery, you see street names that you drive on every day," she said. "Those families are here. So teaching that sense of community to the youth is important.”
Ethan Alvarado is one of those youth.
Wearing his khaki, olive green, and patch-covered Boy Scouts uniform, he hunched down next to a small, rounded headstone, sweat pouring down his face as he concentrated.
In black chalk, a name emerged. Sergeant Louis E. Jenkins, an Army vet who died in 1940.
“Happy with it?” his dad, Ivan Alvarado, asks him.
“Yeah,” he replied, inspecting his work.
Four months into this research program, the 13-year-old is a pro compared to some of his peers.
He’s also learning firsthand that historical accounts don’t always match up. His research involves not just digging up records, but noting discrepancies and making efforts to set the record straight.
“There's like a lot of stuff that could be wrong or different in a bunch of different websites,” Ethan said.
Just a few hundred feet away, 6-year-old Milo Feliciano watched his mother Mea Kroenke try her hand at etching, too. They’re both hunched over two flat headstones embedded side-by-side into the ground.
“This one is my grandma, and this one is her friend,” Milo says, pointing to the stones, as his mom rubs the black chalk stick against the white paper taped to the stone.
Kroenke had not visited Lutz Cemetery since her grandmother died in 2015. So when the etching exercise was scheduled, she jumped at the chance to bring Milo.
“I just kind of took it as a sign of, ‘oh, I should I should probably get on that,” Kroenke said. “So now he will learn something, and I will grow up and go visit the dead.”
She said Milo is a little young to be doing research himself, but the cemetery will still need help when he’s older.
Teaching budding historians
At the end of the day, Hedstrom reflects on the project so far.
“When we started it, we had like nine kids that enrolled, and then I think we picked up a few more today,” she said.
The Florida Legacy Project is still in its infancy. With the help of a local mom who homeschools her own kids, Hedstrom has started working on a more formal curriculum to teach kids how to research people and historical events.
Eventually, she’d like to partner with local schools to offer the program to a lot more students.
“Right now, the kids are kind of just winging it,” Hedstrom said. “They're just out there Googling and seeing where that takes them, but hopefully we'll get a little more direction for them.”
The cemetery only has one headstone with a QR code so far, but that’ll change by December. Each of the headstones assigned to these kids will soon get their own portal into the past.
QR codes aren’t just for the dead
Hedstrom is pushing these kids and their families to do more than just research strangers. Anyone can purchase a QR code now to be used on a future headstone.
It’s originally why Jennifer Blakeley founded Life’s Qr.
On the company’s website, she writes: “My vision was to create something that would allow future generations to hear a grandfather's voice, watch a mother's videos, see treasured family photographs, and read the stories that make a life unforgettable. To me, memorials should do more than mark where someone rests. They should celebrate who they were.”
Purchasing a QR code before death allows people to be in control of their own stories. They can upload photos, videos, and other mementos about their life so that strangers won’t have to search for their information and piece together their lives in the future.
“Tell your story, leave this for your kids, your family,” Hedstrom encouraged.
Becoming a community hub
The QR codes are not the only project in the works.
The cemetery is also selling engraved bricks for a pathway being used to fund a veteran’s honor garden, and a scattering garden will soon allow people to spread the cremated remains of loved ones who opt out of burial.
Plus, Hedstrom has already drawn up the plans for a heritage center and military museum to be built among the headstones and open to the public.
There, future generations can learn about the history of their community and the people who once lived there.
Hedstrom also hopes to host more family-friendly events and provide a space for the kids to do their research together in one place.
She said they just need to raise the money.
