WEST DENNIS (CBS) – Cleaning up history, with care and respect. It’s happening at a cemetery on the Cape.

“In this guy’s case, about 110 years of dirt,” says Charlie McGibbon as he scrubs a headstone in the West Dennis Cemetery.

Charlie has made it his mission to clean every gravestone there.

“These are museums. They’re the history of the town. These people paved the way for us, so we owe it to them, we really do, and that’s what drives me,” he says.

He’s been doing the work for three years. “I started at the corner, and I’m up to probably 800 stones,” he says.

One at a time, Charlie carefully scrubs the old headstones then applies a biological spray that penetrates the stone and kills bacteria without harming the environment. When he started, almost all the gravestones were black and unreadable, now most of them are clean and in great shape.

“When I see the stones clean, it’s really rewarding. It’s unbelievable,” he says.

Charlie chose this cemetery for his labors because his parents are buried here. He does this hard work three or four days every week, for free. He hopes to finish cleaning every headstone at the West Dennis cemetery next summer.

Charlie says, “this is part of the community just as much as a living person is.”

“These things are monuments to the people who were here and the hardships they went through. They didn’t want to be forgotten,” he says.

Charlie also researches the genealogy of each person buried at the cemetery and gives that information to the town. The hope is that it will become a searchable data base.

Volunteers also work cleaning headstones in other Dennis cemeteries. On Sunday the town is holding a training session for anyone who wants to join the cleanup efforts.