Most people on their days off from work enjoy relaxing. They lounge around watching Netflix or maybe hang out with friends for an activity or two. However, for at least one Florida mailman, his go-to activity for his free time is something you would never expect. His name is Clarence Hollowell.
Every Sunday, the 60-year-old spends his day off from delivering mail down at the local cemetery cleaning headstones!
Not just any headstones, though. Hollowell’s main focus is on those of veterans who are buried there.
Unfortunately, not all of the deceased have family members or friends living in the area who are willing to take care of their gravesites.
Over time, many of them can get pretty rundown, and that’s where Hollowell steps in.
To date, the mailman has cleaned over 600 headstones.
“Everybody’s gotta have a project, and I think if you can help the community, even better,” Hollowell told The Florida Times-Union.
His technique is simple.
He starts at one corner of the headstone and begins scrubbing. Then he slowly works his way across using a cleaning solution called D/2 Biological Solution. At $40/gallon, it’s quite expensive, but it is the only solution that’s approved for use in national cemeteries.
He also has a plastic scraper that he uses if anything is growing on the grave, a soft wire brush for the main portion of the cleaning, and a toothbrush for reaching into the small spaces.
“I’ll work on this for about an hour,” Hollowell said. “Back and forth. It’s just like your hair. You rinse and repeat.”
If people notice him, that’s great, however, Hollowell doesn’t do it for the attention.
His inspiration largely comes from his own time spent in the military.
Hollowell comes from a military family and he himself served in the Army. Although, he doesn’t give any special preference to any specific branch of the military when selecting which gravesites to work on.
“A veteran is a veteran,” said Hollowell.
Recently, he has been spending his time cleaning a group of headstones from the early 1800’s that he believes belong to members of the U.S. Colored Troops — a branch of the Army that was made up of minorities.
It’s information that he discovered from the research that he usually does after the fact.
“I go to Ancestry.com and find out about them,” Hollowell said.
Hollowell records the names from every headstone he cleans in order to look them up later and see what he can discover — things like where they died, how, and other interesting facts about their lives.
According to Hollowell, every cemetery and town has a story, and for him, cleaning the graves is largely about taking a moment to reflect on the memories of those who served, a large portion of whom gave their lives defending the country.
There are a million other things he could be doing on his day off, but every week like clockwork, Hollowell heads over to the cemetery and gets to work.
See more pictures of the inspiring mailman Clarence Hollowell below.
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