Members of the Rindge Veterans Association gathered on Rand Road and began a march, Saturday morning.
They were headed to the gravesite of Revolutionary War veteran Col. Daniel Rand, tucked into a family plot in the woods behind the former Rand homestead. The site looks dramatically different than it did a few months ago, before a months-long restoration project freed the resting place of Rand and his wife, Susannah, from an oak tree that had grown between their graves and slowly swallowed their gravestones.
Selectman Larry Cleveland has spent months leading an effort on behalf of the Rindge Veterans Association — with help from multiple volunteers and donations from local businesses — to remove what remained of the tree, whose top had sheared off years ago, and to carve around the stones so they could be removed intact and reset.
Since the Ledger-Transcript last reported on the project, still more has been done, said Cleveland, calling the project “99%” complete. Rindge Sand and Gravel donated 16,000 pounds of stone dust to create a new layer to set the stones, and KDI Landscaping donated mulch to place atop the stone dust. Jewell Masonry has completed work to repair the stone wall surrounding the graves, including a cap for the top of the wall.
“It’s definitely a labor of love. It was some hard work, but for a worthy cause. I was very honored to be asked to work on this,” Cleveland said.
To honor Rand, and mark the completion of the project during America’s 250th birthday year, the Veterans Association honored Rand and placing a new American flag into the veteran’s marker on his grave in anticipation of the town’s Memorial Day observances next week.
A speech was given by Craig Clark of the Rindge Veterans Association, thanking Rand “deeply and gratefully” for the sacrifices he and others made during the formation of the country, before the Veterans Association gave Rand a rifle salute and the playing of “Taps.”
Cleveland said the Veterans Association has typically placed a veteran marker on Rand’s grave, decorated it with a flag for Memorial Day, and placed a wreath during annual Wreaths Across America ceremonies, where wreaths are placed at veterans’ graves over the winter, but this is the first time he was honored with a gun salute.
“I hope they’re looking down on us and smiling, because it’s all about honoring them,” Cleveland said. “He’s one of our founding fathers of Rindge. I think it was a worthy cause to make sure that he, and his wife, too, were honored. He played a big part in the birth of our country.”
Cleveland said that while some minor work still needs to be completed to finalize the stone wall, the majority of the work on the grave restoration is complete. He said there are still some things he’d like to see accomplished, such as installing a third grave marker in the cemetery to honor one of the Rand children who is buried in the plot. During the restoration process, ground penetrating radar confirmed the presence of the grave of a young child, which is likely to be Susannah Rand, who died at age 3 by drowning in a well.
Cleveland said he would like to see a fundraising effort to erect a stone for the young Susannah, as well as create a roadside marker to mark the entrance to a short trail to the cemetery along a right-of-way, so that members of the public can pay their respects. Ideally, he said, the marker could be made from the wood of the very tree that had obscured the Rands’ graves for so many years.