Sam Cantey IV, 84, remembers visiting the Pioneers Rest Cemetery for the first time while on a sixth grade field trip and feeling an instant pull to the historic place.

The cemetery stands as Fort Worth’s oldest burial ground, containing the graves of the city’s founders and some early settlers.

Cantey and his classmates spent most of the visit running across the cemetery looking through the gravestones, he said.

“One of my classmates said ‘Stop, stop you’re walking on my ancestors,’” he recalled with a chuckle.

That memory stuck with Cantey for over seven decades and serves as a foundation for why he’s found his way back to Pioneers Rest as one of several volunteers leading revitalization efforts at the 175-year-old cemetery.

For Melanie Smith, president of the cemetery’s association

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