Headstone mystery resolved for WWI veteran
HIGHLANDS, N.J. — After 70 years, John Thomas Purcell's headstone found its way to his final resting place.
John and Barbara Leonard, a mostly retired couple who own a bungalow on Gravelly Point Road, found his gravestone outside their home while cleaning up their property after superstorm Sandy. The white marble marker was peeking out from underneath tree limbs and debris that had stacked up against a stone gate just outside their home.
Today, two employees from the Fair View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Middletown hoisted the heavy slab, which has been badly damaged, into the front seat of a pickup truck, guaranteeing its safe passage to the cemetery where Purcell, a World War I veteran, was buried in 1944.
"My parents are buried over at Mount Olivet (Cemetery in Middletown)," Barbara, 77, said Friday morning. "So I think when we go to visit them at Christmas, I'll go and visit (Purcell), bring him a little flower or something."
Barbara contacted the Asbury Park Press last month for assistance in locating the gravestone's proper resting place. The engraved name — "John Thomas Purcell" — and the date of birth matched that of a man buried at Fair View Cemetery. Bill Rockafellow, superintendent at Fair View, checked the records and determined Purcell was indeed buried there, but the stone had never been in the cemetery's possession and thus had never been placed at the gravesite.
On Friday, Barbara said since the original Asbury Park Press story ran a few weeks ago, she's had some neighbors, friends and family inquire about the headstone. One person even told her that he'd seen that headstone before the storm.
Back in Purcell's time, Rockafellow said, the common practice was for the family to receive the stone and for them to transport it to the cemetery where it would be placed on their loved one's plot. For whatever reason, that stone never made it to the cemetery. It's not clear how the stone found its way to the Leonards' front driveway and where it had been before that.
U.S. Census and Selective Service registration records found through familysearch.org show that in 1942, Purcell was living in a duplex rental on Fifth Street in Highlands, about a half-mile east of the Leonard family's bungalow.
Purcell's wife, Ferris, who had the last name of Patterson when she died in 1975, is buried above him. Both plots are unmarked.
Rockafellow and co-worker Mike Weingarten inspected the stone outside the Leonards' home on Friday. Much of the lettering describing his military service is badly eroded and the bottom of the slab is gone, taking most of Purcell's date of death with it. That also complicates how Rockafellow will set the stone, which would stand up if it were intact.
Thinking out loud, Rockafellow said he might place it vertically inside a cement base or perhaps lay it flush with the ground. Either way, he said, they'll place it so people can know who's buried beneath it.
"It's got his name on it, that's what counts," he said, remarking on the damage.