The Oklahoma State Historic Preservation Office will kick off a threepart webinar series on cemetery preservation with the first session on September 4, at 2 p.m. The webinars will be part of SHPO’s “Saving the Sacred” series. Session one will focus on cemetery preservation planning. Jason Harpe, a public historian and director of cemetery conservation at Richard Grubb and Associates in North Carolina, will be the featured presenter in each session. Harpe has nearly 20 years of experience in historic preservation and the museum field.

Many cemetery stewards understand that they need to address the issues they face, but they often have no idea where to start or who to involve to help guide them on this journey. The first session will provide details on the cemetery preservation planning process for stewards of historic cemeteries, including basics such as ownership, stewardship, memorialization, interpretation, short-term and longterm planning, signage, community engagement, fundraising and grant writing.

The second session is scheduled for October 2, at 2 p.m. Harpe will outline where to look online and in archives for information on cemeteries and decedents buried at respective cemeteries. He will provide details on a variety of methods to properly record information on cemeteries and the decedents, including the information uncovered during the research phase of the project. Harpe will also focus on frequently disregarded or unrecognized details, such as funerary art and stonecutters’ marks on grave markers and monuments. This session will also include information on geophysical survey methods and online databases to document and present cemetery data for a broad range of audiences.

The third and final session will take place on November 6, at 2 p.m. This session is geared toward cemetery stewards who have properly researched and recorded their cemeteries and developed preservation plans. It will focus on the more detailed parts of conserving and repairing grave markers and monuments that pose safety challenges, have accelerated states of deterioration, have inappropriate past repairs that pose current and future conservation obstacles, and those that are so far gone that conservation is not a consideration.

Register online for the webinars. For more information, contact Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer Lynda Ozan at 405-522-4484 or lynda. ozan@history.ok.gov.