BUSHMAN REMEMBERED
A man who lay forgotten in an unmarked grave in a Taranaki cemetery for 59 years now has three memorials.
After a community fundraising effort, a Taranaki Daily News story and the arrival of a generous benefactor, the unknown bushman has a headstone on his grave in Stratford, an engraved cross in the churchyard at Whangamomona and a massive portrait in one of his old haunts - the Whangamomona Hotel.
Joe Lewandowski was a bushman in the Te Wera and Whangamomona areas.
He died aged 79 in 1958 and was buried in the Koupuatama Cemetery at Stratford, but he never had a headstone.
Lewandowski’s story came to light in 2015 after Whangamomona Hotel owners Richard and Vicki Pratt commissioned a portrait from an old photo of a man they called ‘‘the unknown bushman’’.
It turned out that some of his relatives were still farming in the area.
One of them is Gayleen ‘‘Bloss’’ Coplestone. Lewandowski’s uncle Mathaeus, who came out on the boat with his mother, and his wife Josephina were her great-great grandparents.
Little was known about Lewandowski’s life and he never married or had children, but the community had adopted him, she said.
‘‘Seeing as he died in Whanga, lived in the area...we just thought we’d get him a headstone.’’
They put a jug on the bar for donations and raised about $500.
‘‘From donations from locals and visitors we had a cross made and engraved for Joe but this was not permitted to go into the Kopuatama Cemetery.’’
The cross was made of steel, which is not a suitable material, according to Stratford District Council regulations.
Instead, the cross was installed in the yard of St Johns Church at Whangamomona, a stone’s throw from the pub, in July this year.
A Taranaki Daily News story about Lewandowski and the community’s efforts was seen by Darryl Anderson who owns the Headstone Warehouse.
His wife, Rose, said: ‘‘We both looked at it and how they’d gone to the trouble of raising money for a memorial and then it wasn’t accepted... we thought it was sad so we decided to donate a wee memorial, and they were rapt.’’
The new headstone was engraved and installed on his grave in Kopuatama cemetery earlier this month.
Coplestone plans a quiet get-together at the grave to celebrate. ‘‘I just think it was so generous of them, what they did. They did everything, they asked us what we wanted to put on the stone and they arranged it all.’’
Few details are known about Lewandowski’s life. His mother Marianna came out from Poland on the Fritz Reuter, landing in New Zealand in August 1876. She gave birth to him at 18, and the identity of his father is unknown.