Tasha Tietz and Kelly Penman Jr., two nurses who spend their spare time cleaning and restoring grave markers in South Dakota and Iowa, see aging gravestones as reminders of the people’s names behind them — not simply weathered pieces of stone.
That belief has grown into a community service effort rooted in care, dignity, and remembrance.
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Before taking on larger restoration projects, both first focused on graves in their own families, Dakota News Now reported. Tietz, an Aberdeen nurse known online as “Graveyard Girl,” and Penman, a Carlisle, Iowa, nurse who goes by “The Cemetery Guy,” later expanded those efforts.
According to Tietz, her starting point was tending the graves of relatives and ancestors. From there, and with permission, she moved on to cleaning additional markers at Aberdeen’s Riverside Memorial Cemetery. After creating her Facebook page in 2020, she also began posting videos of the work…