<A HREF="http://www.thetimesonline.com/index.pl/article?id=26111592">Northwest Indiana News: TheTimesOnline.com - Couple take on monumental task</A> Couple take on monumental task Merrillville couple catalog Lake and Porter county cemeteries. BY MARGE KULLERSTRAND Times Staff Writer Posted on Sunday, August 11, 2002 Although Doris Brozak was singled out for the Outstanding County Genealogist award, she'll tell you the honor was not hers alone. The award was presented for reading and cataloging the cemeteries in Lake and Porter counties -- all 122 of them. That work, which has taken 10 years, was done by Brozak and her husband, Ed, both retired and living in Merrillville, with the help of 72 other volunteers. According to Northwest Indiana Genealogy Society editor Linda Swisher, "Doris wanted the award to be for both of them, but she was the one nominated and it would have been too difficult for IGS (Indiana Genealogy Society) Awards Committee to change it. "But other than the fact that it was Doris that started the ball rolling, the couple has worked as a team all along."It started on July 22, 1992, when the Northwest Indiana Genealogy Society asked for a volunteer to find the locations of the cemeteries in Lake and Porter counties and I volunteered," Brozak said. She said they started trying to find the locations of the cemeteries, but while she and Ed were in Porter County, one incident changed the course they would take. "The cemeteries had been indexed in the '50s but things change so much the index was really outdated," Brozak explained. "The cemeteries had old addresses such as the northwest half section of 12, so when Ed and I found them we decided to give them new addresses. "The first cemetery we went to was in a field between two roads with a Revolutionary War soldier in it and we felt so badly that it was in a location so very hard to find," Brozak said. "So while we were there we wrote down the information that was on every stone and then Ed suggested a database would be a big help to people who were looking for their ancestors. When we told the genealogy society about it, several people volunteered to help us. "But at that time Brozak had no idea it would be a 10-year project. "We came up with 55 cemeteries in Porter County and 67 in Lake County and as of now we have 118 of the 122 done and in books in the Lake and Porter county public libraries, as well as each of the township libraries," Brozak said. "As of now, there are 262,404 names in the database. We are also having the information sent to Salt Lake City, Utah, Allen County, and several other libraries and archives." (The Mormon church in Salt Lake City maintains a large database of ancestral records used by genealogists.) Of the four cemeteries that are not finished, two have been read and the Brozaks are now in the process of proofreading them. The last two to be finished are Fern Oaks Cemetery in Calumet Township and Chapel Lawn Cemetery in St. John Township.The Brozaks have proofread every cemetery that was read by volunteers. Ed was responsible for finding a great way to read old, worn stones."At first we were using chalk to rub the stone," Brozak said. "But it didn't take long and you were scraping your knuckles on stone. Then Ed came up with the idea of using drywall. We just break off a piece of it and take the paper off one side and you can read every single letter on the stones. Also, the drywall doesn't harm the older stones at all. "One of the more interesting mysteries the Brozaks have been able to solve during their quest is the case of the found monument.There was a man from Illinois who had found a large monument from the 1800s on State Line Road and was trying to locate the grave that it should be on. He sent the name to the Illinois and Northwest Indiana Genealogy societies but there was no record of the girl. Then as the Brozaks were cataloging a cemetery in Cedar Lake they found the plot where the child was buried."That man was so happy to be able to put that monument back where it belonged that he brought it back himself," Brozak said. "He just couldn't stand the thought that it wasn't where it belonged. "That was eight years ago. Although Brozak couldn't remember the gentleman's name, the deed always stays in her mind.Doris' interest in cemeteries began when she started to trace her family roots in 1976. She even traveled to Salt Lake City to find her family's history. There she was able to trace them all the way back to England.The Mormon Church, based in Salt Lake City Utah, has one of the most extensive libraries of genealogy available in the United States. Northwest Indiana Genealogy Society meets monthly and guests are always welcome. For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.rootsweb.com/~inlake/nwigs.htm or call Mike Sutton at (219) 477-6686.