Funeral home director reunites father, son after grave sunk into the ground

CHARLESTON, Mo. — When a Wyatt, Missouri, man died in a car crash near Charleston last month, his family wanted to bury his remains with their father. The only problem was the funeral home director had trouble finding the father’s gravesite which had sunk into the ground at a Mississippi County cemetery.

According to Terry Parker, funeral director at McMikle Funeral Home,

Louis Anderson Lynch was just 2 years old when his father, Anderson Lynch, died at the age of 30 in 1954 while working on a job in Chicago, leaving Louis, his siblings and his mother, Charlotte.

“Louis’ father was buried at Oak Grove Cemetery at the family’s choice,” Parker said.

In the 1960s, Louis Lynch and his family left Charleston for the Detroit, Michigan, area in search of a better life, Parker said. Then, about three years ago, Louis Lynch chose to return to Mississippi County.

“Louis moved back here because he was afraid with living in the large city of Detroit that he would get sick with COVID-19,” Parker said. “He thought that coming back to his roots here, he would be more protected from viruses.”

On June 18, Louis Lynch, 72, died in a car accident near Charleston. Because Lynch’s father was buried at Oak Grove Cemetery, his family thought it would be appropriate to bury his cremated remains there as well, Parker said.

“They thought why move him to Detroit? They just thought it would be nice to place him at Oak Grove with his dad,” Parker said.

So, Parker set out to find Lynch’s father’s grave in Oak Grove Cemetery near Charleston.

At the time of Anderson Lynch’s death, his wife ordered a veteran’s marker, but it had since sunk into the ground, Parker said.

“Oak Grove is an old cemetery,” said Parker, who also serves as Mississippi County’s coroner. “It has so much territory of basically unmarked graves for many reasons. A lot of it is financial. Back then, when people passed away, they didn’t have the money to buy a headstone. Oak Grove historically has not really had great record keeping because it was a county-owned cemetery to help those in need.

Parker continued: “Not everyone buried out there is obviously in that category, but it is one of the older cemeteries in the county, and it is a very large cemetery.”

According to Parker, the search for Anderson Lynch’s grave began.

“We walked and walked, and we found nothing,” Parker said. “The veteran’s marker that had been placed on Louis’ father’s grave in 1954 had sunk in the ground.”

Parker said in 2014, the marker was still partially visible due to the website “Find a Grave,” which allows people to search for graves.

“We also know that in 1980, it was very visible because there were some genealogical ladies in town who mapped every cemetery in this county,” Parker said.

Parker said he was able to locate Anderson Lynch’s gravesite, thanks to the assistance of Shirley Bryant and Joan Feezor from the Mississippi County Genealogical Society.

“I reached out to Shirley and Joan, and they guided me to the general area of where he would be at but no luck,” Parker said. “The stone was gone; it had sunk about 6 to 8 inches in the dirt, and I had just about given up.”

Parker said the next morning, he called his friend, John Walton, and they returned to the cemetery with a metal detector and shovel, where they discovered the headstone.

“So, we were able to cremate Louis and place him on top of the grave with his dad,” Parker said.

According to Parker, the veteran’s marker sank over time due to a lack of proper foundation.

“I’m sure Mr. Lynch’s widow back then in 1954 did well just to get the free veteran’s marker provided by the VA when a veteran died,” Parker said. “From the looks of it, the marker just rested on the ground and just sank over the years.

Parker continued: “She was blessed that he was a veteran because back in that day, she may not have had the money to have a stone at all.”

Parker explained back then, people would sometimes make homemade headstones out of concrete and write on them with a pencil to mark their loved one’s graves.

“Those who couldn’t afford a nice head stone just did what they could do,” Parker said. “They did the best they could to mark their loved ones’ graves.”

According to Parker, there has never been an established map of Oak Grove Cemetery, but the majority of cemeteries will have one.

“Ninety percent of your cemeteries, unless it’s a little rural country church cemetery, will have an established map where you know, for example, that grandma is in section three, plot 24, and grandpa is going to go into plot 25.”

But at Oak Grove, there is no such mapping system, Parker said.

“It’s, basically, if you can find a space here and nobody is here, it’s yours. It’s a first-come, first-serve,” Parker said.

Parker said the only way to re-establish everything so people can obtain plot numbers and map numbers would be to close a section of a cemetery where burials had already occurred. However, Parker said this would prevent someone from being next to a loved one if space is available.

Parker said prior to Bryant and Feezor sectioning off the cemetery with their mapping in 1980, it was a complete mess.

According to Parker, when Anderson Lynch died, his wife ordered the veteran marker herself and had it shipped to Wyatt, Missouri, by train.

“So she was a smart cookie because usually the funeral home would help people with shipping those,” Parker said.

Back then, the funeral home was known as Sparks Funeral Home, and the funeral director in Charleston went to get Anderson Lynch in Chicago and transported him back to be buried.

“It really is a remarkable story,” Parker said. “We are just glad that Louis was able to be buried where his dad lay to rest.”