Veterans Affairs retrieves headstones from Riverbank home

Amy Buenrostro was relieved when she learned earlier this month that the 12 tombstones she and her family found in the backyard of their new home did not mark any actual graves there. But she didn’t want them to stay in her backyard as steppingstones, which, as it turns out, is what the previous homeowner had purchased them as. The Department of Veterans Affairs and some families didn’t want the stones used that way, either, and have taken them off the family’s hands.

The discarded tombstones contained typos, were flawed in some other way, or had been replaced by a new one with a spouse’s name added. A deputy with Riverbank Police Services determined the previous owner purchased them at a discount from a now-closed business in Turlock that made marble and granite headstones.

A Nov. 14 story in The Modesto Bee chronicled the family’s discovery of the tombstones and the deputy’s investigation that followed.

Buenrostro thought she’d try contacting the families of the deceased to offer them the tombstones for “sentimental reasons.” Before she could get started, calls started coming into The Bee newsroom from family members who had read the story and saw the names of their deceased relatives.

The VA’s National Cemetery Administration also called. The administration had been alerted to the story because some of the tombstones belonged to veterans.

Spokeswoman Kristen Parker said veterans’ headstones are paid for by the administration and therefore are government property.

“When replacements are ordered or the originals are damaged upon arrival, cemeteries are supposed to dispose of them properly to maintain the dignity and respect of our veterans,” she said.

Esther Linen, daughter of World War II veteran Bernard Linen, said reading that a headstone intended for her father’s grave had been used as a steppingstone was “very distressing.”

“You can’t imagine how we (she and her siblings) felt,” she said.

Linen was put in contact with Parker, who already had arranged for representatives from the San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery to visit the Buenrostro family’s home to determine which headstones were government property.

The representatives removed and properly disposed of four headstones they determined were made for veterans.

The headstone of Rosario Arias, 1935-1986, for many years marked his final resting place.

His daughter, Lisa Arias, said her father’s headstone was replaced when her mother passed away and was buried alongside him in Winton Cemetery. How the headstone made it from the cemetery to Riverbank is unclear.

Arias lives in Idaho but contacted her brothers in California. Neither of them wanted to retrieve the headstone and said Buenrostro could donate or dispose of it.

Tom Vance, son of Melvin and Ressie Vance, also contacted The Bee. “I thought it was a fluke (that) I saw her name in The Modesto Bee (because) she died March 11, 2000,” he said.

In the story, his mother’s name was mentioned as one of the possible typos but Tom Vance said it was spelled correctly. “My mom had to explain the spelling of her name all of her life,” he said. “She’d say, ‘It’s like Bessie with an R.’”

He picked up the headstone from the Buenrostros’ home last week and saw that the likely flaw was a large chip on the bottom, although he didn’t know the headstone that marks his parents’ graves was the second one made.

He plans to keep the headstone in his yard, but not as a steppingstone.

This story was originally published November 29, 2014 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Veterans Affairs retrieves headstones from Riverbank home."