Maintaining the Shine of Our Lost Soldiers on Memorial Day

Epoch Times

26-05-2025

Tom Pawlak and Robert Trae Zipperer live 2,200 miles apart, but they share a common belief: that unlike old soldiers, no gravestone or marker of a U.S. military member should ever fade.
For Pawlak, 73, from Arizona, restoring the bronze plaques of veterans and those lost in combat to their original pristine condition has become his mission in life.
Zipperer, 56, is a Navy veteran from Florida who is equally passionate about restoring gravestones.
Pawlak's quest began during a visit to a private cemetery in Phoenix in 2014, where some plaques were badly tarnished and hard to read.
As Pawlak scrubbed, buffed, and polished one marker, the name of U.S. Marine Pfc. Oscar Palmer Austin began to emerge.
Born on Jan. 15, 1948, Austin died in Vietnam on Feb. 23, 1969.
Related Stories
5/21/2025
5/26/2024
Pawlak then realized that Austin, a 21-year-old African American soldier from Texas, was not an ordinary recruit; he had received the Medal of Honor for bravery on the battlefield and the Purple Heart after being wounded.
The U.S. Navy later named a guided missile destroyer in his honor—the USS Oscar Austin.
Pawlak reached out to the ship's commander to share his discovery and the restoration work he had completed. Two weeks later, he received a package from the Navy that contained a flag, as well as a blue cap with 'USS Oscar Austin' emblazoned on it.
He began wearing the cap everywhere he went.
'As soon as I began wearing the cap, people would stop me on the street to talk,' he said.
He started going out more often to cemeteries, polishing and sanding the letters on the tarnished bronze plaques, Pawlak said.
Robert Trae Zipperer, founder of VeteranGraves.com, launched a volunteer effort cleaning gravestones across the nation in 2019.
Courtesy Robert Zipperer
In 2014, he founded Mission Restore Bronze, a social media movement on
Remembering a Friend
Originally from Chicago, Pawlak never served in the military. However, he feels a deep connection with veterans and the military—he lost a friend just three weeks after the friend arrived in Vietnam in 1967.
He thinks of him every time he visits a cemetery and notices the sad condition of the bronze grave markers.
'I'll walk through a cemetery and see a bad marker. I'll have everything with me and finish it,' Pawlak said.
Pawlak recalls his first volunteer: a naval commander who wanted to restore his father's bronze plaque in Tampa Bay, Florida.
Other volunteers would ask him how to clean plaques when visiting cemeteries.
Pawlak offers free jars of his proprietary wax, along with video instructions on how to apply it correctly for lasting results.
The volunteer effort 'just exploded from the start,' he said.
'I couldn't leave the house. I took a shower and had 16 messages when I returned,' he said.
His efforts have inspired at least one Eagle Scout project in the Phoenix area.
In 2017, 13-year-old Levi Brown assembled a team to clean and restore approximately 250 bronze grave markers at Greenwood Cemetery in Phoenix.
Pawlak said he has no idea how many military personnel plaques have been cleaned and restored through his virtual movement.
Tom Pawlak of Arizona started Mission Restore Bronze Markers in 2014 as a one-man effort that has grown into thousands of volunteers nationwide.
Courtesy of Tom Pawlak
Most volunteers are people he doesn't know and has never met in person.
Since his project launched, Reserve Officers' Training Corps programs for youths have carried the mantle forward, as well as court diversion programs and other groups.
'I'll just walk around and hand out wax jars to people,' Pawlak said. 'I'll have markers that I take care of regularly—people I've known.'
Often, he'll get a call from a potential volunteer and send a jar of wax on request. Each jar contains enough product to clean 12 to 16 markers.
However, if Pawlak had to estimate the number of volunteers, it would potentially be well over 75,000, based on the viewership of his YouTube
'We've included first responders and police. I'll supply them with wax,' he said.
During another visit to Phoenix, Pawlak felt compelled to take action when he noticed that the bronze plaques commemorating the 622 Arizona soldiers killed in Vietnam needed love and care.
With a brush in hand, he and other volunteers scoured, scrubbed, and waxed the bronze plaques and statues of foot soldiers, restoring them to a remarkable shine for Memorial Day.
He's also cleaned bronze plaques in Washington and even the statue of Gen. George S. Patton at the museum dedicated to Patton in California.
He said that getting down on his knees to clean is easy, but getting back up is hard. He could use more eager, younger volunteers.
Keeping Honor Clean
While researching his family tree in Lee County, Florida, Zipperer observed that many military gravesites were in poor condition, with some hardly legible due to mold.
A veteran's headstone is covered in black mold.
Courtesy of Robert Zipperer
The once-bright headstones had turned dark gray, making the names hard to read.
Zipperer faced frustrating regulatory challenges in Fort Myers before finally obtaining the necessary approval to clean the headstones in time for Memorial Day in 2019.
Initially, city officials claimed he needed permission from the families to clean the headstones, warning that he would be trespassing and 'soliciting' otherwise.
However, after Zipperer brought his case to the media, the city changed its position.
'I'm just a guy that doesn't take no for an answer. You can't have a veteran's headstone covered in crud. It's just not American,' Zipperer told The Epoch Times.
The headstone as it now appears after cleaning.
Courtesy of Robert Zipperer
Rules for Restoration
Zipperer later discovered no standard operating procedures at the local, state, or federal levels concerning cleaning veterans' grave markers.
He contacted the National Cemetery Administration in Washington, which advised him to submit a proposal in writing.
Eventually, the agency incorporated his ideas into national
'The graves just sit out there covered in nastiness,' Zipperer said.
'I've had to get out hedge clippers and cut bushes to reach a veteran's grave enveloped in vegetation.
'You'll cut it all back, and you'll clean it all up, and then you'll scrub the headstone and get it clean.'
The NCA, part of the Department of Veterans Affairs, estimates that it has supplied more than 15 million headstones to national, state, and private cemeteries nationwide since 1973.
In fiscal year 2022, the agency provided 347,361 headstones and markers for military personnel buried in the nation's cemeteries.
The VA operates 156 national cemeteries and 35 soldiers' lots and monument sites across 42 states and Puerto Rico.
Members of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment place flags at the headstones of U.S. military personnel buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in preparation for Memorial Day in Arlington, Va., on May 22, 2025. Nearly 1,500 service members entered the cemetery at pre-dawn hours to begin the process of placing a flag in front of approximately 260,000 headstones.More than 4 million Americans, including military personnel from every war and conflict, are interred in VA national cemeteries. Approximately 84 percent of veterans are in private cemeteries throughout the country,
Zipperer believes the deteriorating condition of veteran headstones signifies a 'lack of caring' and funding.
Through his website,
, he hopes to recruit more volunteers and financial support for his cause.
'The problem is we don't have the [public] funding,' Zipperer said. 'Nobody creates funding for veterans' headstones. I'm doing what I can do, but I don't have an unlimited budget.
'Every state should be contributing to this. Every American should be contributing to this cause.'
Zipperer estimates he's spent more than $500,000 out of pocket to promote his mission on YouTube.
'There are people in Australia who love their veterans as much as Americans love their veterans,' he said.
Before and after images of a bronze veteran grave plaque.
Courtesy of Tom Pawlak
'I'm just broadcasting it out there to whoever receives the message.'
Pawlak said he also had to use his own funds to support Mission Restore Bronze Markers.
'I just dedicated myself to doing it,' he said.
Celebrity Appeal
In 2021, before Memorial Day, Zipperer appeared on the ABC syndicated talk show 'Live With Kelly and Ryan' to present his case.
The response was nothing like he had anticipated.
'I'm naive, I thought this was going to be it,' he said. 'Tom Hanks was going to reach out to me. Clint Eastwood was going to reach out to me. Gary Sinise was going to reach out to me. Steven Spielberg was going to reach out to me.'
Patriotic celebrities, one and all, he said.
'And they would provide the help I needed to make this vision a reality. I thought all the senators and governors were going to call. My phone was going to blow up,' he said.
'Do you know how many people called?'
No one, he said, except for a nice woman in New Jersey, who saw him on television.
'We love our veterans in our county,' the woman said to him over the phone. 'We're going to take up your cause here.'
She asked if Zipperer would attend the county's Memorial Day celebration, and he agreed.
An American flag at sunset in Springerville, Ariz., on May 25, 2025.
Allan Stein/The Epoch Times
Zipperer was struck by the community turnout in Hunterdon County that day.
He finally grasped the true purpose of this mission.
'This is an American cause,' Zipperer said. 'We can make this happen.'