DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – News 6 first told you about a forgotten piece of Daytona Beach history last June after it had fallen into disrepair. Now, that historic cemetery is getting a second chance.
Heavy machinery, volunteers, and local businesses were hard at work Sunday at Pinewood Cemetery, giving a long-forgotten piece of Daytona Beach history a much-needed facelift.
Tom Caffrey with the Historic Pinewood Cemetery Association said the site has been without stewardship for decades.
“This cemetery has been abandoned with no true owner since the Merchants Bank went belly-up back in the Great Depression, so this is really, really huge,” Caffrey said.
After years of neglect, business owners, landscapers, and community volunteers are stepping up to help restore the burial site.
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Volunteer Suzanne Eerkey said the work is personal for her.
“My history is that I’ve been here three years, but I was raised here. I’ve seen it grow, and I’ve seen it come back. I want to be part of this cemetery,” Eerkey said. She added that the restoration has been done entirely through donated efforts, saying, “not a dollar was spent here. The only thing that’s been spent is everybody’s time.”
Caffrey said more than 1,700 people have been buried at Pinewood Cemetery since the 1800s, including one of the brothers from the famous “Real McCoy” family of Prohibition-era rum runners.
“We’ve got some of the founders of Daytona here — the first police chief, the first mayor,” Caffrey said.
With the help of volunteers, the recently formed nonprofit hopes to transform the site into a place worth visiting once again. “We cleaned the homeless people out of here. We’re bringing new life to the cemetery,” Caffrey said.
The organization hopes to have the cemetery up and running by the Fourth of July.