Sitting on 22 acres of land, west of Notre Dame Avenue and adjacent to the University’s main gate, Cedar Grove Cemetery is one of the first places guests lay eyes on when entering campus. More importantly, it serves as the final resting place for over 16,000 members of the Notre Dame community and their families, and a space for prayerful reflection, contemplation, and consolation. Something the Cedar Grove Cemetery team takes pride and care in.
“A cemetery is ultimately a place of hope- hope that sorrow will find consolation, that ashes will find beauty, and that the bodies buried here will be the seeds of the Resurrection,” said Jon Adamson, director of Cedar Grove Cemetery. “The architecture, stones, graves, statues, crosses, grounds, and plants- everything at our cemetery- should point to this hope.” And it was with this hope that Jon began the cemetery’s large headstone restoration project in 2023, one that still has a few more years remaining before completion.
The goal of the project is simple: give the graves of those whose headstones had been damaged or deteriorated the proper dignity and care, as well as addressing safety concerns for stones that might topple or otherwise suffer further damage. Members of the Cedar Grove team work together to catalog the stones, the grounds crew makes repairs within their scope, and partners like Jacob Domalewski, owner of Cemetery Craftsmen, uses lime-based mortar and epoxy to straighten and repair broken stones. With the conditions of the stones themselves, their foundations, and the weight and preciousness of these stones and crosses, a simple repair can take up to a week to complete.
Student employees, such as Saul Zabukovic, also painstakingly clean hundreds of stones by hand. “My part of the project focuses on removing the natural buildup that accumulated on the stones over time,” remarked Saul, rising junior at Notre Dame. “I spray the stone with a solution called D/2 and then handscrub the entire surface of the stone with a wired brush before rinsing it with water. A typical stone takes about 3-4 hours to clean.”
To take it a step further, Saul’s attention to detail inspired an additional phase to the project- restoring and adding new crosses on stones that had lost theirs. “Seeing how clean Saul was getting the stones inspired me to think of the motto, “Ave Crux Spes Unica,”” said Jon. “If we profess the cross to be our only hope, then our crosses should all be in excellent condition as a witness to the Gospel and our mission as a Catholic University.”
Together with local sculptor Andrew Smith, son of former architecture professor Thomas Gordon Smith, over 140 crosses will be designed, carved, and placed within Cedar Grove Cemetery. "Having my father buried at Cedar Grove adds a personal element and a feeling of rootedness to this ongoing project," said Andrew. "From him I learned what it meant to study, care for, and preserve the artifacts of the past so the work here is especially meaningful to me. It is an honor and a privilege for me to play a part in the effort to beautify, restore, and promote continued legacy within the University." This level of detail and care is what is so uniquely Notre Dame.
For something that is so tedious and may cause quick frustration, everyone working on this project finds joy in it and is committed to the mission. For Jacob, it’s preserving the heritage of these individuals and the continuation of the Corporal Work of Mercy—bury the dead. For Jon, it’s seeing the cleaned and restored stones gleaming in the daylight and praying as he walks the grounds. For Saul, it’s imagining what the lives of each person looked like with stones dating back to the late 1800s and early 1900s, and being a part of preserving that legacy. For Andrew, it's preserving the artifacts of the past and promoting continued legacy within the University. And for Cedar Grove Cemetery, it’s providing a special place that expresses faith, hope, and love in perpetuity.
Originally published by at uoes.nd.edu on July 02, 2026.