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 Howard Andrews (Center Junction), Herb Rehmke (Oxford Junction), and Connie Humpal (Anamosa), members of the Jones County Cemetery Commission survey the Johnson Town Cemetery in Scotch Grove Township along with Craig Neises, reporter for Monticello Iowa Express in March 1997.
Dean Gipple, from Columbus Junction, who is in the picture below, is the person who was responsible for getting the bill passed in the Iowa Legislature in 1996 that allows each county to establish a county cemetery commission. The commissions' main purpose are to preserve pioneer cemeteries (those with six or fewer burials within the past fifty years).
 Dean, who is past 80 years, came to Jones county the day Pat Shaw presented the proposal to create a cemetery commission to county supervisors. He made the two-hour drive from his home to work on the restoration of Johnson Town Cemetery. He did the same for the Mahaska County Cemetery Commission in southeast Iowa. He recently had quadruple-bypass heart surgery, but is planning to continue his work in cemetery restoration in Louisa county this summer.
 Steve Stary (West Union), Betty Ganfield (Cascade FFA member), Dean Gipple (Columbus Junction), and Spot the Dog work at Johnson Town Cemetery.
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 Julie Delaney (Cascade FFA member) and Ron Ruess (Anamosa, Olin FFA Advisor) repair gravestone.
 August 13 workday: LaVerta Langenberg from Mechanicsville, IA, using a probe to locate underground bases (She is the Jones County Genealogist who has provided many cemetery records.); Evelyn Stoll from Cascade, IA (bending over), daughter of Jones Commission Member Howard Andrews; Sara Stoll, FFA Member from Cascade and daughter of Evelyn Stoll; Margaret Tallman from Morley, IA holding the level; son of Evelyn Stoll; Steve Story from West Union and native of Olin in Jones County. (Steve and his wife, Donna, both retired educators, train and work well with volunteers.
 Julie Delaney and Betty Ganfield, the FFA Chapter members in the photos above, will be on a panel discussing their restoration efforts at the Expo Conference in Des Moines on June 13. Other persons on the panel will be Tom Andrews, Sara Stoll and Travis Anderson from Cascade, and Nick Balichek and Brad Lasack from Oxford Junction.
August 1997. |
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for a photo of the tombstone. This reading, provided by the