The volunteer who tends graves of 150 strangers
- Published
Fiona Dunlop has received a Spotlight Award for her work in the Borders
When Fiona Dunlop volunteered to look after dozens of war graves scattered across the Scottish Borders she felt she was paying a family debt.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) had tended the burial sites of her relatives for many years.
Now the former Peebles High School teacher takes care of more than 150 graves throughout the region.
She has just been recognised with a Spotlight Award for her efforts in ensuring the sites are looked after.
Ms Dunlop said part of her inspiration came from taking students on trips to the World War One battlefields in France and Belgium during her time as a teacher.
"I became very familiar through teaching the children about the work of the CWGC with the CWGC's work abroad," she said.
However, there is another, more personal, reason.
"I feel I'm sort of paying back the CWGC because they look after the graves of two relations of mine," she explained.
Ms Dunlop hopes to become a tour guide to tell the stories of the people buried in Peebles Cemetery
One was her great-uncle, Donald, who is buried at Langemark in Belgium having been killed in the early days of Passchendaele in 1917.
The other was her grandmother's first cousin who was killed in the Iolaire disaster in 1919 and is buried at Ness on the Isle of Lewis.
"The CWGC have looked after them, so I'm happy to contribute my bit to the organisation," she said.
She now looks after more than a dozen cemeteries from Peebles to Hawick and finds cleaning and tidying the headstones "much more enjoyable than ordinary housework and gardening".
Ms Dunlop is able to call on assistance for any graves requiring a deeper clean.
"It is a lot of work, but fortunately I don't end up having to clean them all myself all the time," she said.
"The CWGC, for the more problematic graves, have got senior maintenance craftsman who go out and do steam cleaning and things like that.
"I can do the sort of easier jobs myself, in terms of sort of cleaning round the graves but for the really tough jobs they come into their own."
She said there were aspects of her volunteer work she found particularly enjoyable.
'Out of the blue'
"One of the best things about the volunteering that I do is finding out the stories of the people who are buried in these cemeteries because, you know, they're all people like us," she said.
"They all have their own stories and their own backgrounds, so that's one of the really rewarding elements, finding out about them."
Ms Dunlop is now training to become a CWGC tour guide and hopes to share the stories of those buried in Peebles Cemetery.
She said her award had come "completely out of the blue".
"I was really delighted and honoured to get the award because it's wonderful to be recognised by an organisation for which you have so much respect and affection," she said.
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- Published27 June 2020
