From left, Zachary Wagner, Tammy Wagner and Taylor Birckbichler read the name and date from a footstone in St. Joseph Cemetery in North Oakland. Young people, many in the combined confirmation class of Mater Dolorosa Roman Catholic Church in Chicora and St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in North Oakland, are helping to map out a long-forgotten section of the cemetery as part of a community service project.

NORTH OAKLAND — If you were to ask a teenager what they did last weekend, you would likely get the typical response of shopping at the mall or seeing a movie.

You might be surprised if the answer were "Read gravestones in the cemetery." But that's exactly what a group of area youths are doing as a community service project.

The youths, many in the combined confirmation class of Mater Dolorosa Roman Catholic Church in Chicora and St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in North Oakland, are helping to map out a long-forgotten section of St. Joseph Cemetery along Route 68.

For the past few weekends, they've volunteered a couple of hours to help read and record information from the headstones. The goal, according to Tammy Wagner of Chicora, is to construct a database that will help cemetery visitors easily locate their deceased loved ones.

"If somebody comes and wants to know where that person is, I have to know where they're at," said Wagner, who recently took charge of the cemetery.

The search is on for the cemetery's original record book, but so far it has not been located — so Wagner and her young helpers are reconstructing the records row by row, stone by stone.

Most of the headstones date as far back as 160 years, from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s.

"Some of them are really hard to read," Wagner said, adding the teens scrape away moss and deposits and occasionally use paper and crayons to make rubbings to decipher names and dates.

"They are all that white sandstone, and they've worn down really thin. It takes a little while to decipher some of them."

So far, only three have remained unreadable. It's a painstakingly long process. There are about 500 grave sites to be recorded, Wagner said.

The project came about as Wagner examined the cemetery records of the church. She saw that a section of the cemetery had never been mapped, and there was no written record of those who were buried there. Knowing the confirmation students are expected to dedicate at least 15 hours to community service, she asked for volunteers.

"I had a really good response from the kids," she said. They've been meeting on weekends, usually after Mass on Sundays, and spend up to three hours at a time reading and recording information."

Although Wagner expects the mapping to take several more weeks, most of the youths have said they want to participate until the project is done, she said.

"We kind of ran into some problems at first," said Brenna Ritzert of Chicora. "The things were all confused. Some (stones) would be in a straight row, and a couple were jutting out, or they would be in their own row. ... It was frustrating at the beginning, but once we got it going, it was kind of fun."

Ritzert is applying her volunteer hours to both the confirmation class and also National Honor Society requirements.

Brittani Fedorek of Chicora, an eighth grader at Karns City, said she was surprised at the age of some of the headstones.

"I didn't expect to find gravestones from way back in the 1800s. It was kind of neat finding those," she said.

"It was kind of fun trying to figure out the names. It was kind of like a guessing game. ... You have to really look at it and work hard."

The cemetery mapping has been a combined effort for the English family of Petrolia. All five children of Victor and Beverly English have been helping with the project, said Victor English, who also has been writing code for an eventual computer database."They enjoy doing it and it helps them as well," English said about his children Vanesshia, an eighth grader; Victoria, a ninth grader; and Karns City seniors Vaughn and Vincent. Also helping with the project is 11-year-old Vantelle. Vincent, Vaughn and Vanesshia are with the confirmation class, while Victoria is applying her hours to National Honor Society at school."I haven't heard any complaints yet. That's a plus," English added. "I know they will be there for the duration."Also helping with the project are confirmation class members Taylor Birckbichler and Ethan Pakutz, both of Karns City; as well as Wagner's children Zachary, 11, and Bridgette, 9, along with her niece, Kara Kennedy of Butler.Asked if they had any reservations about volunteering in a cemetery, the teens all said they quickly put aside any fears."It doesn't bother me," said 13-year-old Nichole Setzenfand of Chicora. "At first it was weird, but then you get used to it."Fedorek agreed. Her friends "think it's kind of freaky, standing in a graveyard. I wasn't scared. It was the middle of the day. If it was seven o'clock and dark, it would be kind of scary," she said.Helping with the project has brought the youths a new sense of history, according to Wagner."When they drove past a cemetery before, it was just stones," she said. "Now they realize that there are people there and they had a past too."Setzenfand agreed."Even though they haven't lived for a very long time, they are still a part of our church history and everything," she said.The work can also prove to be heart-wrenching at times."They found one family that lost three children a week apart," Wagner said. As the group worked, they wondered what might have caused such a devastating tragedy."At first someone said maybe a car accident. Then they realized they didn't have cars back then," Wagner said. "So we talked about how they didn't have vaccines, and illnesses hit them much harder. ... They're reasoning out some of the things that could happen."

Vincent English reads the weathered engraving on a headstone in St. Joseph Cemetery along Route 68 in North Oakland.