The man ought to be careful....they may claim eminent domain......
Holy cow. Just when you think life has gotten about as interesting as it’s gonna get...
Those appear to be markers from a US Veteran’s cemetery. They are, indeed, US Gov’t Property.
http://www.cem.va.gov/hm_hm.asp
“Fannie Marie” in a military cemetery? I wonder if Fannie used to be a man’s name or if this could be a nurse or, well, what? Be interesting to find out.
As an Army veteran, I will state that in this case, government property = public property, does not permit the tombstones to be removed, by the public, from the cemetery(ies) where they marked graves of deceased soldiers.
I consider the removal to be theft and desecration of the soldier’s graves. If the tombstones were replace by the cemetery, then they should have been properly destroyed rather than randomly dumped.
The article says ‘13 tombstones’.
Is it just me, or does it look like 14 and possibly 15 are on that truck?
They need to track down the previous property owner(s) if they're still alive. I'm guessing either a former VA/Cemetery employee who was supposed to dispose of the old gravestones when replaced, but thought he'd sell the marble, then had second thoughts.
Given the timeframe (late 60's - early 70's) I would have guessed hippie-based desecration, except it sounds as though the stones were replaced, and if there had been an incident of desecration or theft, there's apparently no record of it.
While researching my family’s history a few years ago, I found mention in an old book of a very small(maybe 12 or 14 people) cemetary in Dallas that had the graves of my gg-grandparents and others who were some of the areas very first settlers in it. I found that the cemetary was in a neighborhood that was developed some years ago and the good-ole-boy system allowed them to encroach too closely into the cemetary. State law says the cemetery belongs to those buried there, not a neighborhood organization that came along later, but over the years the neighbors grew their yards into the area until it was almost obliterated. When I got someone with the Dallas Historical Society onboard, they were confronted by neighbors who demanded they stop the cleanup! They wanted it left ‘to nature’ What was left of it was overgrown with poison ivy and dead trees.
Eventually, they did get it cleaned up and a plaque put on the cemetary, along with a marker that had the names of the known burials there.
In the 1950s we used to go from Oregon down to Alamogordo, NM to visit my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Often we’d go to a ghost town called White Oak. Leaning against the back outer wall of a long abandoned saloon was a military tombstone. We created many stories about that stone…guy died that loved the bar, guy was killed in a fight and they buried him at the back door, etc. After a few trips an old timer came by to explain what happened. The saloon owner was a woman who had a loved one lost in WWI. The government delivered the stone to her and she just leaned it against the back rather than put it where it belonged. Rainwater from the roof did the rest, embedding it into the earth like it was a grave. I went back about 15 years ago and the tombstone is gone.
Another possibility is the company that made the original markers saw flaws {cracks etc} in the markers during manufacturing process and made replacements and those were not sent. The rejected markers would company property. A worker may have taken them for private use.