Westport Trio to Restore Historic East Providence Cemetery

Todd Baptista says he's been passionate about cemeteries his "entire life."

Baptista and two friends have turned that passion into a business and have landed a contract to restore 112 gravestones at the historic Newman Cemetery in East Providence, Rhode Island.

The City of East Providence has appropriated $50,000 in American Rescue Plan Act grant money for the project, likely to begin in the spring.

"Once the temperature is sustained above 45 degrees, we can begin work," Baptista said.

Baptista, Troy Rebello and Dawn Young, all of Westport, founded TNT Gravestone Sollutions LLC in 2019 after meeting at a town-sponsored workshop on cleaning gravestones. All three have full-time jobs.

Baptista is a clinical consultant pharmacist by trade. Rebello is the properties and maintenance director for New Bedford's Fleet Fisheries, Inc., and Young is a senior vice president for a regional bank.

The trio learned to repair gravestones after cleaning old stones at Westport Point.

"The stones looked really nice, but there were many that were broken," Baptista said.

"It's like someone that goes to the dentist for the first time in 20 years," he said. "Their teeth are now clean, but nobody realizes that because they were dirty for so long there were a bunch that were broken."

They hired a conservator to teach them how to repair broken gravestones.

The trio cleaned over 12,000 gravestones in Westport and repaired nearly 1,300 at no charge to the town. They acquired the required insurance and opened their part-time business cleaning and repairing gravestones in other communities.

"We have worked for clients in New Bedford, Dartmouth, Ashland, Freetown, Assonet, Fall River and Raynham," Baptista said.

"We have repaired the graves of abolitionists, whaling captains, murder victims, people who owned slaves, ministers of the church, children," he said.

READ MORE: Westport Pharmacist's Passion Is Repairing Gravestones

Baptista said he wonders about the people whose graves he cleans and restores "all the time."

"I research the history of the person in the family so that we learn about our ancestors in town," he said.