×

Student works to preserve history

News Photo by Julie Goldberg Alpena High School senior Tyler Edmonds works on his community service project during his engineering class Friday. Edmonds has been making computer-aided drawings of an iron fence and gates from the Evergreen Cemetery in Alpena to help preserve the history of them.

ALPENA — This school year has been a busy one for Alpena High School senior Tyler Edmonds because of a community service project he’s been completing in his engineering class.

Edmonds has been working on making computer-aided drawings for an iron fence and gate from the Evergreen Cemetery in Alpena. His drawings will help preserve the history of the fence and gates, as well as provide guidance to future fabrication and replacement of them.

The iron fence and gates were originally installed at the cemetery in 1906, but removed in 2017 by the City of Alpena because of their deteriated condition.

Edmonds said he’s been working through the school year on the dimensions of the fence to be able to complete the computer-aided drawings on his computer. There are some tasks that are taking longer for him to complete, like figuring out the arches on the fence and gate, but he said it will be fast once he gets the hang of it.

Edmonds has a presentation on May 13 where he will share his work with members of the Alpena County Library and City of Alpena Engineering Department. His work will be put into a future publication of the history of the cemetery.

“It’s pretty cool for a high school student to have drawings done and published,” Alpena High teacher Elly Diamond, who has been working alongside Edmonds, said.

In his presentation, Edmonds is planning on talking about the individual pieces of the fence, show the blueprints that he’s created, and the process of everything he’s done during the project.

There have been 19 snow days this school year for Alpena Public Schools, which has not helped Edmonds and his tight deadline. He wasn’t expecting so many snow days, but he’s now working faster and hopes everything will be ready for his presentation.

“I probably would easily be done and we would do everything more calmly, but I had to deal with it and figure out how to speed up a lot faster,” Edmonds said.

While completing this project, Edmonds has learned a lot, including time management skills. He said he was slow getting into the project in the fall, but now he’s working fast to make up for lost time.

“I’ve learned kind of the hard way,” he said.

Edmonds is planning on joining the Navy in August for a few years to work as a cryptologic technician. A cryptologic technician protects the cybersecurity for the Navy.

“This will benefit me if afterwards I do become an engineer,” Edmonds said.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12.

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today