Volunteers and students help restore Victor Village Cemetery; lecturer urges careful conservation

At a public lecture in Victor, lecturer Mike Beast said volunteers and students have been cleaning and stabilizing monuments at Victor Village Cemetery as part of a local preservation effort. "We have been trying to clean it up," Mike Beast said, noting that "Bob's been in charge of that" and that "John Butler also helping us out," and that the Victor High School Key Club provided much of the labor.

Beast described the conservation technique the volunteers use, urging caution to avoid damage: "The last thing you want to do is any damage. So you actually can spray these monuments down and it'll slowly break down the moss and the lichens." He named a bio-enzyme product used in the work, saying, "We use something called Endurance," and noted competitors (participants named a product referenced as "D2"). He emphasized using soft brushes and scrapers softer than the stone and the rule of thumb to "do no damage."

The lecture framed the cleanup as both respectful stewardship and a way to recover historical information that monuments preserve. Beast pointed to one marker as a "story stone" that lists a workplace and cause of death for an individual, and said volunteers' work can restore such readable details for genealogists and local historians. He also described fundraising and seasonal placement of wreaths as part of ongoing community efforts.

Organizers asked for public support for maintenance and preservation work; Beast thanked the Key Club and local volunteers and said the group is pursuing small fundraising efforts to keep the program going. The lecture closed with an invitation to future tours and with a reminder that volunteers should follow conservation best practices and cemetery rules when cleaning or visiting gravesites.

The presentation did not record any formal municipal action or vote; the cleanup appears to be a community-led volunteer program rather than a council-adopted project.