It was midday on a misty Thursday afternoon, and a chain-link fence separated the living from the dead, the former oblivious to the latter.

On one side of the fence were the white-and-gray buildings of Marshfield High School, from which teenagers were streaming out into the parking lot, chatting, laughing or rushing to their cars or another class. None paid attention to what lay on the other side of the fence: a steep plot of unruly grass adorned only by dozens of headstones.

The graves at the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery were forgotten, but not gone. And within half an hour, some of the burial sites belonging to soldiers of a distant war would receive a measure of respect, in time for Memorial Day - from a few dozen of the high schoolers on the other side of the fence.

-- q --

Popularly called the Pioneer Cemetery, the burial ground beside Marshfield dates to August 1891, when the IOOF lodge in the city then called Marshfield founded a cemetery to replace an earlier, smaller one by Telegraph Hill. The cemetery became the final home of Marshfield residents for a generation, only to fall into obscurity as other cemeteries opened in the Bay Area and relatives of the deceased moved or died.

On Monday, during a ninth-grade history class, the teacher introduced his students to a World War II veteran, 87-year-old Rudy Buselmeier, who related his stories from the Pacific war against Japan - then turned the presentation in a new direction, one that soon would involve the teens themselves.

Buselmeier presented wooden crosses, 30 of them, painted white. Then he handed the teacher, Bruce Bryant, a map of the graves just yards from the classroom - with 30 sites marked.

"I asked the kids, 'There are 30 veterans; what war were they in?'" Bryant recalled two days later. When the students appeared puzzled, the teacher went on, "I'll give you another clue; it was the same war."

Buselmeier explained to the class he had been placing crosses beside veteran's grave sites, keeping their memories alive when few others would. In a few days, it would be the students' turn to clean the headstones and mark the sites; a chance to experience American history firsthand, more vividly than books allow.

"We're covering World War II and the Korean War, and this was the perfect way to make the meaning more real to them," said Bryant, a Marshfield teacher for 13 years. "I wanted the kids to have an experience to make their learning more worthwhile."

At last the students learned whose graves they would restore - those of people who moved to the Bay Area after fighting in the Civil War.

-- q --

At the end of a second-floor hallway at Marshfield, Room 250 is a shrine to civics and the past. Half a wall is given over to pages of Life magazine documenting D-Day and the Allied invasion of France; photographs of U.S. senators, arranged by state, ring the room near the ceiling.

Twenty-nine freshmen streamed into the classroom early Thursday afternoon as a bell sounded to mark the beginning of the fourth period.

Gabbing students shushed one another and a girl hastily tucked a soft-drink bottle into her backpack as a tallish man with graying hair and mustache walked through the door, ready to give them their unique assignment. In threes, they would find the burial places of Civil War soldiers, clean the headstones, then return the next morning to plant crosses beside them.

"Stay with your group and don't wander off," Bryant told his charges. "No food and no drinks. It's a place where people are buried and it has to be respected."

-- q --

Five minutes later, he swung open a rusty gate and the teenagers streamed into the cemetery, the past and present finally mingling, if only for a week. Some held goggles, brushes and spray bottles filled with cleaning solution to strip grime off epitaphs that otherwise would be barely legible.

Once inside the burial yard, the threesomes trudged off in all directions, attempting to find the headstone bearing the name of a soldier they had been assigned - and, at first, failing. One trio of girls circled a patch of ground three times, only to stop and glance yet again at their map.

Gradually, the students got their bearings and found the graves of the ex-soldiers. A slightly bulky, curly-haired boy called to his two partners and led them to a slim, dark obelisk curtly embossed "F.M. GARRISON, CO. F., 3 IA. INF."

"Is that 'colonel?'" Andrew quizzed the two other boys.

"I think that's 'company,'" replied Kevin Sayler. The stone bore no other clues: no birth date, no date of death, only his military unit in block letters against a shield-shape background.

Satisfied they had found their target, the boys set to work removing decades of dirt and soot from the marker. While Steven Mann sprayed the cleaning fluid onto the epitaph, Sayler and Andrew used brushes to scrub the sandstone. Above the name "Garrison," a bit of white began to show.

"Andrew, you're stepping on the dead person," Kevin suddenly remarked; his friend quickly moved his feet a foot to the right, off the stone rectangle set in the ground.

A quick pour of water from a plastic jug carried off the grime and the letters stood out in high relief. Twenty minutes passed as the boys repeated the process, spraying, scrubbing, rinsing.

"It's giving me a good feeling," Andrew said as he worked, "helping to preserve the memory of someone."

An hour later, a second group of freshmen was at work in the cemetery, cleaning more headstones - many of them of an identical shield design like that of the obscure Garrison. As others found the resting places of their soldiers, a slim blonde girl came across a sandstone marker: "A.H.H. DINGMAN, CO. G., 9 IND. INF."

"I think it's great to have the hands-on experience," said Kelsie Armstrong as two classmates caught up with her, struggling to keep their footing on the rain-slicked grass. "A book doesn't teach you everything you need to know." Pointing to the grave, she added: "You'll probably remember this longer than a book."

-- q --

It was midmorning on Friday as Bryant's class again made the walk from Room 250 to the IOOF Cemetery. Along with their spray bottles and brushes, they also carried crosses and rubber mallets with which to plant them in the ground. But while most of the teenagers were merely marking the work already done, Bryant and a few students had one task left: to locate three graves that had escaped their search the day before.

As other students tapped crosses to the right of the newly cleaned headstones - then scrubbed them yet again - two of their classmates followed the teacher to a far corner of the cemetery, facing two stone walls overlooking the street.

"Lieutenant Bohlon, where's Lieutenant Bohlon?" Bryant called out to his two helpers. "I looked that way yesterday and I could not find him anywhere." His marker continued to go undiscovered even as other students found the remaining two sites.

Suddenly a female voice rang out, "I found him!" Down a lumpy slope, Bryant found a black stone beside the wall and read the inscription.

"Balch," he said. "It was actually 'Balch'" - Lt. Edward T. Balch of the 37th Connecticut Infantry, Company H.

Thirty grave sites of Civil War survivors all were accounted for.

Returning later in the morning with a second class, Bryant went alone to Balch's grave, holding a cross and a mallet. Nine taps of the mallet and the cross was in place.

"Saving Lieutenant Balch, I guess," he said brightly. "It's like saving Private Ryan."

-- q --

The normally locked gate to the cemetery will be left open through the Memorial Day weekend to allow visitors to see the long-forgotten burial sites and pay belated respect to the soldiers of another era. But Bryant hoped the display would be only a beginning.

Already on Thursday, the teacher announced extra-credit points for those students who, by gleaning microfilm, genealogy records or Web sites, could learn anything about the veterans whose graves they had visited: when they had resettled in Oregon, what their occupations were, when they died. That search is meant to be a starting point for the history classes, which later may create their own Web site telling as much of the Civil War veterans' histories as can be gleaned.

"We're trying to locate old newspapers from 1900 on, because most of the people were buried between 1900 and 1920," Bryant said. "We want to know more about their lives: what they did for a living, what their hobbies and interests were."

For Bryant, the greatest merit of the grave restoration, and the study that will surround it, is that it piques the curiosity of students.

"It's really interesting for them," he said. "They're asking questions like why they came out here after the Civil War.

"The greatest part of history is to figure out the 'why.'"