News Photo by Crystal Nelson Jim Farrar, a resident of Caledonia Township and a Vietnam War veteran, thumbs through a list of veterans interred at the Pleasant View Cemetery in Spruce that he’s been identifying and verifying.

SPRUCE — Jim Farrar, a resident of Caledonia Township, has spent a little over five months really getting to know the veterans buried at Pleasant View Cemetery in Spruce.

The 68-year-old veteran of the Vietnam War began finding his way around the cemetery just before Memorial Day. Farrar, along with a few of his friends, had volunteered to place a flag on every veteran’s grave for the holiday.

“Even after the flags were on the graves, he was still up there making sure they were OK,” township Supervisor Cyndi Apsey said. “He did that in May. He has spent the summer making sure the graves that require flags always have flags on them, repairing flags, replacing flags, getting markers. And, at the same time, he has been verifying veterans which are from way long ago.”

She said Farrar is also good at making sure the cemetery flag is lowered to half-mast when it needs to be and raised when it needs to be.

Apsey, along with cemetery Sexton Cindy Smith, saw that Farrar had a passion for work in the cemetery and asked the township board to recognize Farrar’s dedication by appointing him as the cemetery’s veterans representative.

Knowing the locations of all of the veterans in the cemetery and making sure they have period-correct markers has not been an easy task for Farrar. Period-correct markers indicate which war a veteran fought in.

While many of the graves have headstones indicating who they were or markers indicating they were in the service, some graves may have one or the other. Farrar said there are three Civil War veterans and two veterans of the Spanish-American War at the cemetery who don’t have period-correct markers.

“The two Spanish-American War vets, we’re working on their grave location, because neither one has a marker at all — nothing,” he said. “So, one we identified based on the fact that this individual actually purchased a lot, so we have a name on a map … and the other one, I don’t know. We’re going to narrow it down the best we can.”

Farrar said that, in the original section of the cemetery, when those lots were sold, it was up to the individual families to maintain records. One of the problems at the cemetery is that some of the lots were resold, and the people interred there now don’t match the township’s cemetery map.

He knows there is also a Civil War veteran — William A. Spoon — interred up there whose name is not even on the map.

In total, Farrar has identified 170 veterans interred in the cemetery. He said there are also veterans interred there who served in the first and second World Wars, the Korean War, Vietnam War, as well as in Iraq.

Through his service and his heritage, Farrar says it’s his “personal and solemn obligation to honor the sacrifices, courage and patriotism of the men and women who have worn a military uniform.”

Farrar said his fifth great-grandfather, Danier Farrar, was a soldier during the Revolutionary War and his third great-grandfather, William Farrar, was a sergeant with the New Hampshire Militia during the War of 1812. Farrar said his family is registered with the Sons of the American Revolution.

Farrar was initially trained as a truck driver, but ended up working as a parts clerk in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He has two sons who are also veterans.

Asked why he believes it’s important to serve in the cemetery, he simply replies, “They’ve earned it.

“They’ve earned not only our respect, but they’ve earned the right to be honored and identified,” he said. “For some of these young men in there, they’re from out of state, and, for whatever reason, they came to Michigan and they probably don’t even have any family here, so it’s important that at least somebody visits their grave.”

Crystal Nelson can be reached at 989-358-5687 or cnelson@thealpenanews.com.