NORTHIBRIDGE, Mass. - A local nonprofit is working to recognize the service of veterans who are buried in Northbridge. This week, they installed more gravestones at Pine Grove Cemetery.

“For us, it's kind of the motto of 'until everybody comes home' type of thing," Mike Defazio said. "We've got their back, we're bringing them home.”

The Northbridge Veterans Task Force is honoring the burial sites of veterans one stone at a time. Wally Smith says the project started when he went to place a flag for Memorial Day on an unmarked grave.

“One of the veterans, there was a bench in the cemetery; put your back to the bench, you walk 30 feet, you put a flag in the ground and a veteran was buried there," Smith said. "Well, it just didn't seem right that this veteran was here with no markers, no indication that he was even there.”

Other soldiers have damaged gravestones, or markers which don’t denote their years of service at all.

“This one's really important for us because we're not only writing a wrong," Defazio said, "but we're also fixing something that has been broken for some time.”

The Northbridge Veterans Task Force started raising funds for grave markers and teamed up with ‘An Officer and Two Gentlemen.’ Defazio went to work researching veterans’ graves in town.

“We are re-surveying all of 14 cemeteries in the town of Northbridge to find all the veterans," Defazio said, "and to appropriately mark their graves to commemorate their service.”

“We'd love to do the entire Blackstone Valley," Smith said. "If we can get groups from other towns that are interested in joining us, we'd certainly work with them to get them started in the right direction and share our resources with them and also go forward with them.”

The task force is currently working focusing on placing about 30 stones for veterans from the American Revolution, Spanish-American and Civil War ahead of Veterans Day this November.

Defazio and Smith are both veterans and said the ultimate goal of giving every local grave a proper stone will probably take years, but their team takes pride in the work of recognizing those who served.

“We're talking close to 100 years after they died," Defazio said, "sometimes more that, these folks have been buried and they're finally just getting recognition now.”

“If they serve their country, they deserve to be recognized more than just on Memorial Day," Smith said. "And there should be some indication, permanent indication, that they're there and that they did serve.”