Maintaining the Shine of Our Lost Soldiers on Memorial Day

Two volunteers, one in Arizona, the other in Florida, have launched separate missions to restore military headstones and bronze markers to their former glory.

Carnations and daisies flank the gravestone of Ernest Arsenio Espinosa at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Marana, Ariz., on Memorial Day, May 27, 2023. Allan Stein/The Epoch Times

Tom Pawlak and Robert Trae Zipperer live 2,200 miles apart, but they share a common belief: that unlike old soldiers, no gravestone or marker of a U.S. military member should ever fade.

For Pawlak, 73, from Arizona, restoring the bronze plaques of veterans and those lost in combat to their original pristine condition has become his mission in life.