Our greatparents, Hapie (Helen) and Lalu (Adelbert) Story–Grampy’s (Elbridge) parents–are buried in Lakewood Cemetery. Kris and I tried on our own to find the site, with the information we had from ancestry.com, but to no avail. So we headed to the administration building for help, where we found this most wonderfully kind gentleman with an old register, a database, and a detailed map. It turns out that Hapie and Lalu are buried in PG21, PG meaning “pauper’s grave.” It was set up originally as a place for single (as opposed to family) burial sites. Often these were temporary places until there was a family site to which the person would be relocated. So a “spot” could hold successive people. We learned that Hapie and Lalu’s sites have no marker, so you have to know who is buried next to them and has a stone. And to make things even trickier, in the cold November weather, the row markers and stones needed to be dug out from the severely overgrown grass. But find them, we did. Lalu is in Section PG21, Row 119, grave 34 (next to “Barney”) and Hapie is in the same section, Row 115, grave 12 (next to “York”). Kris and Karen said hello to them from all the family.
We also got their death certificates and both list the cause of death as myocarditis (which according to the myocarditisfoundation.org is an “uncommon” disease); Lalu’s was “chronic myocarditis with hypertension, Hapie’s was simply “myocarditis.”
Our Family Stories 