Millennial Stone Cleaner unearthing and preserving old headstones in Des Moines cemetery

Cemeteries and headstones may give you a spooky vibe, especially around Halloween. But one Des Moines man is trying to change the way we view a person's final resting place.

Wade Fowler goes by the name Millennial Stone Cleaner on various social media platforms. He has over a million followers who tune in to watch him unearth, clean and repair old headstones.

"The method for conservation is to essentially stop the deterioration of it, we aren't trying to bring it back to a new state," Fowler said. "So we aren't going to ever go back in and try and recreate the inscription or something like that, what we want to do is sort of reassemble in place and stop deterioration."

Fowler travels the country, working in cemeteries on a volunteer basis. His latest project is bringing him closer to home. After moving to Des Moines a year and a half ago, he found Sims Cemetery.

"I just happened to be coming through Sims one day just looking around being sort of a cemetery tourist," he said. "And I thought we needed to do some work on that . . . I was really interested in doing sort of top-to-bottom conservation work. So I went to the city. I said, 'Hey, I want to do some things. I want to do this want to take this on.'"

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