The wind is piercing this cloudy November morning, but Demario has removed his coat.

The 18-year-old has been working up a sweat within the chain-link fences of Denton’s Oakwood Cemetery, repairing aging gravestones.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Dan Fauver, right, executive director of North Texas Cemetery Preservation, and a volunteer move a headstone that had fallen back into place after leveling the base. The preservation group is working every Wednesday and Friday to restore headstones in Oakwood Cemetery in Denton.

The pounding of a chisel against a concrete slab pierces the quiet in the nearly deserted burial ground, located across East Prairie Street from Fred Moore Park.

Demario and another man, Dan Fauver of North Texas Cemetery Preservation, are working to level a grave marker and reattach it to its concrete base, after time or vandals had left it lying broken off to the side.

The work helps Demario fulfill the conditions of his parole from the Texas Youth Commission, but that doesn’t mean he’s here unwillingly.

“I enjoy doing this,” Demario said. “It helps me build up my strength.”

Demario, who asked that his last name be withheld because he is a parolee, is one of the volunteers helping to straighten and restore headstones at the historic cemetery.

North Texas Cemetery Preservation, a Lewisville nonprofit group, is heading up the effort with the goal of completing about 70 headstones by mid-month.

Fauver, the cemetery group’s executive director, said he ran across Oakwood while visiting Denton recently and noticed some headstones that needed attention. Some of the grave markers date back to the late 1800s and bear the names of early city and county leaders.

The city’s Parks and Recreation De­part­ment maintains the cemetery but welcomed assistance with leveling and repairing the headstones.

Russell Koch, Denton’s parks manager, said the city is providing materials for the work, while the cemetery group is offering free labor. He said visitors and passers-by would notice a difference once the job is complete.

“I do feel that it will, from a glance, definitely look better,” Koch said.

North Texas Cemetery Preservation was formed in 2003 to help restore and maintain historic cemeteries using volunteer labor. Fauver said he enjoys working with youth commission parolees, since it offers them a chance to learn new skills and gain self-confidence from a job well done.

“They were taken out of the community and now they’re back in, and this is a way for them to give back to the community,” Fauver said.

Vickie White, community relations coordinator for the youth commission, said young people like Demario have provided 168,000 volunteer hours to various organizations so far this year.

White said she appreciated the cemetery group’s work with the parolees, who generally range in age from 17 to 20.

“Dan has opened up a door to us to teach them something else,” she said. “We want our community service to be meaningful.”

For Demario, who has performed work at several cemeteries, repairing headstones also makes him consider his own mortality.

“It makes me think, ‘What if I die? Would somebody come fix my tombstone?’” he said. “At least I did it for somebody.”

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com .

For more information on North Texas Cemetery Preservation, call Executive Director Dan Fauver at 972-814-1679, e-mail him at ntcp@northtexascemetery
preservation.org, or send mail to P.O. Box 292742, Lewisville, TX 75029.

The group’s Web site is www.northtexascemeterypreservation.org .