TOLEDO, Ohio — A local high school is leading an effort to restore and preserve a piece of Toledo's history.
Bowsher High School sits adjacent to one of two Toledo State Hospital cemeteries. Most of the 900 people buried at the cemetery do not have headstones and are only identified by numbered markers that have become overgrown.
Because of this, Toledo Public Schools and Bowsher High School students and staff are working to clean up the cemetery.
Bowsher High School teacher Robyn Hage placed a call on social media for volunteers for the project, inviting the community to join in on the effort.
It is a project which goes beyond the average classroom lesson.
"Not only are we trying to resurrect the cemetery and get it back into the honorable shape it should be in, it is also an opportunity to teach the next generation of students how to value life and how to value someone's legacy," Hage said.
There will be two clean up days on Aug. 31 and Sept. 14 from 9-10 a.m. at the site, which is located on Arlington Avenue next to Bowsher High School and Swan Creek.
Staff, students and members of the community are encouraged to bring trowels, weed-whackers and other tools to help uncover a part of Toledo's history.
The Toledo State Hospital opened in 1888 as the Toledo Asylum with an average of 734 patients during the year.
By 1922, the hospital's first cemetery ran out of room. Because of stigma surrounding psychiatric patients and care, people who died at the Toledo State Hospital were buried in simple wood coffins with a numbered cement brick to mark their graves.
"Among those buried in the cemetery, there were 13 infants and children, at least 86 veterans, and untold numbers of parents, sons, and daughters," according to the Toledo State Hospital Memory Project. "There are several family groups and sets of married couples. Over a quarter were immigrants, who died far from home."
The hospital fell into disrepair and its population grew to 3,500 patients in the 1950s. By the 1960s, models for psychiatric care changed. The hospital eventually transitioned toward outpatient and community-based care in the 1970s.
The current Northwest Ohio Psychiatric Hospital is located at the same site where the Toledo State Hospital once was.
For more information on the cemeteries and the burial log, visit the Toledo State Hospital Memory Project.