Baby with no name. War hero. Homeless. Beaufort County’s unclaimed are remembered
A 76-year-old man whose son refused to claim him. A 40-year-old woman from Haiti. A decorated World War II veteran. An unknown baby girl.
On Thursday, 34 lives, these included, were celebrated as important before they were laid to rest at ceremonies at Beaufort National Cemetery and Forest Lawn Cemetery in Beaufort.
All died in Beaufort County. That’s about all anybody knows about them. They had no family when they died, or at least no family who would claim them. Their remains, one way or another, had ended up on shelves at the Beaufort County Coroner’s Office over the years.
“We’ve come now to say they’re special, they are important, they are not forgotten,” said the Rev. Waymond Duke of St. Helena Baptist Church at Forest Lawn, adding that money, talent and social position are important to society but not to God.
The ceremonies and burials were arranged by the Beaufort County Coroner’s office, ending a quest to hunt down the families or properly dispose of the remains. One person’s remains had been at the office for 39 years.
“They will not sit on a shelf in another office, this I hope,” Coroner David Ott said.
In attempting to find families and properly interring the people, Ott said he was picking up where former Coroner Ed Allen left off.
Beaufort County purchased a crypt at Forest Lawn for $4,884 to inter the 30 cremated remains in the mausoleum. Four veterans were buried at Beaufort National Cemetery.
At Forest Lawn, Coroner’s Office employees who investigated the cases of the forgotten residents lifted up a casket-sized box containing 6-by-10-inch plastic containers with the remains. Then they hoisted it into the square-shaped opening in the mausoleum. In the future, Ott said, unclaimed remains will be put in the same crypt.
To Debbie Youmans, chief deputy coroner, the people who were finally laid to rest had became like “extended family” because she spent so much time trying to find out who they were and whether they had next of kin.
“No one,” Youmans said, “deserves to be in a cardboard box on a shelf.”
Youmans was one of several staff members in the coroner’s office leading the effort to find the families of 62 people. That quest picked up in June. Youmans worked the phones. She searched internet sites like Find A Grave. The office also worked with the Sheriff’s Office intelligence division, she said.
One of the challenges was finding information about older people who lived many years before the explosion of technology, Youmans said. Little information was available about those people online.
The office was able to turn over the remains of 28 people to family members, she said, which gratified employees who work on the cases. “This is a real problem to solve,” Ott said, “and it has been solved.”
Few details are known about their lives, Ott said. “That’s what makes it partly that sad.”
Some of the people died of natural causes, others in accidents. Some people died in nursing homes, or homeless, with no family that could be found. “They were at the end of their line,” Youmans said. All ages and races, men and women are represented on the list of the unclaimed, she added.
The 76-year-old man died in 2019. His son refused to claim him.
The unknown baby girl died in 1989. She may have been stillborn. Hospitals, Youmans said, are required to notify the Coroner’s Office when babies are of a certain size.
The woman from Haiti was Case No. 82-61. Authorities could find no family. She was born May 18, 1942 and died on May 8, 1982, 40 years old. Her name was Elysee Luckner.
The World War II veteran was Lawrence T. Davis, an Army Tec 5, or technician fifth grade. For his service in that war, he was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.
