Video: Greenport woman uses power tool to maintain cemetery where husband is buried

She’s a 68 year-old woman with a sawzall and she means business.

Former Greenport trustee Gail Horton bought an electric saw to help maintain the Greenhill Cemetery, a historic burial ground where her late husband, David Horton, is interred.

Ms. Horton said she remembers that when she first married 45 years ago, another woman would mow and clean the cemetery, paying kids in the neighborhood to help. That woman, Evelyn Clark, inspired Ms. Horton to continue the work of maintaining the cemetery, she said, after the responsibility was ultimately turned over to the Village of Greenport.

“The cemetery needs some restoration and some care,” she said. “The village has been doing a lot, but they need the volunteer effort too.”

She and local volunteers have been pruning back chokecherry and ailanthus trees on the Greenhill cemetery’s property this winter to help avoid damage to tombstones by falling branches.