Mother Nature granted the Cemetery Association with beautiful weather for the May 3 Indian River Cemetery walk, in which members found this year's projects for maintenance and upkeep of the grounds.

Clinton's Cemetery Association has been in charge of maintaining and keeping the Indian River and Beaverbrook cemeteries in a neat and attractive condition since 1900.

Association President Richard Marcinek said that he and a few others had assessed the property before the walk with other members of the association.

"We have an idea of what we have to fix," he said.

The main projects include the re-stringing of the flag pole, a few tombstone repairs, and the removal of a few dead trees that could potentially damage the grounds or surrounding graves if left standing.

"Basically, [the cemetery's] not in too bad of shape," Marcinek said.

A group of around 14 people, a mix of Cemetery Association volunteers and residents, walked the grounds with garbage bags and removed old flowers and tattered flags from graves and garbage throughout the cemetery.

The Cemetery Association's elected officers and directors meet throughout the year to address the cemeteries' upkeep and maintenance. Another cemetery walk is usually scheduled in October to assess the Beaverbrook Cemetery.

The Indian River Cemetery was established in 1665 and was originally owned by the First Church of Christ Congregational and became the responsibility of the association in the 1800s. The first recorded burial dates back to 1670.

"There are a lot of big names buried here," said Doris Kelsey, 92, former secretary of the Cemetery Association for more than 30 years and longtime Clinton resident.

Many of the names of the buried are familiar today: Morgan, Hull, Kelsey, and Pierson.

Kelsey said that when the cemetery was first established, it "used to be as wide as the Parsonage lot."

Since then, the cemetery has grown to slightly more than 27 acres and is decorated with a mix of sandstone, granite, marble, and metal grave stones.

According to Sexton Bob Bruch, the white, marble-like tombstones are the ones that crack the most out of all the stones on the grounds.

"There are fissures in the stone," he said, noting that these small cracks and ridges in the stone collect moisture that expands in winter freezes, causing the stone to break and fall.

The sandstone tombstones also do not weather well; the stone eventually erodes and flakes as it ages, Bruch said.

As sextons, Bruch and his wife Barbara are charged with the maintenance of the church and surrounding graveyard. They keep records of who is buried in the cemetery and where they are located. They can also be known as the "gravediggers."

Currently, there are only a couple of stones that have fallen; the association will fix them within the year.

To pay for the work, the association taps a private fund that is not included in the town's operating budget.