Police investigate missing cemetery markers
Dozens of markers honoring vets now gone
A routine visit to get ready for a local holiday has uncovered a crime.
Borough police are investigating the theft of dozens of markers from the graves of veterans buried at the Lansdale Cemetery.
“All you’re doing is just hurting veterans’ families. These men and women died, and served their country, and without these people we wouldn’t be here,” said Marti Drumheller.
A longtime member of the Lansdale Historical Society, Drumheller and fellow LHS volunteer Lisa Phillips led an effort in 2019 to place concrete markers on ten veterans in the cemetery who had previously been unrecognized. Those markers were formally unveiled on Veterans Day of that year, and Drumheller said Tuesday that she and Phillips last saw the older brass, bronze and other metal markers on graves in the cemetery in late May, and went back earlier this month to prepare for the town’s birthday festivities in late August.
“We went over before Memorial Day, and everything seemed pretty good, except we needed to replace some flags,” she said.
“We figured, now that Founders Day is coming up, we were going to get everything squared
away for Founders Day, so the cemetery looks good” for a tour offered by LHS.
Instead, when they visited on July 11, the volunteers noticed something missing — dozens of somethings, more precisely, the various markers that had indicated the graves of local vets.
“We started walking the cemetery, and I said ‘Lisa, there’s markers missing all over the place, what the heck is going on?’ We started, grave by grave, section by section, and discovered either 56 or 58 missing,” Drumheller said.
“Some had the flags laying there, some had the flags missing,” and others were in the wrong places, like an American flag on the grave of a boy, and another flag on the grave of Lucy Johnson, the maid to town founder John Jacobs.
Most of the missing markers are at least ten years old, a few from veterans of the Vietnam War but more from the Civil War through World War II-era, she said. Most of the missing markers were from a rear section toward the cemetery mausoleum, fewer are missing closer to Broad Street or Whites Road, and Drumheller said nothing appears to be missing from inside the mausoleum itself.
“Anybody can walk in, day or night. There’s a fence, but no gates,” and no cameras or lights to aid investigation, she said.
Borough police were contacted immediately, and are investigating, she said; police have not yet provided any more information on the case. Drumheller said she’s also been in contact with Montgomery County’s Office of Veterans Affairs, to look into options for restoring the markers, and said any effort to do so would likely have to run through Lansdale Borough, which has cared for the cemetery since 2013.
“We’re hoping we can get the word out that, ‘Don’t steal these markers.’ They’re not worth anything monetarily,” Drumheller said.
“If you go to a scrap yard, from what I understand, there’s a fine if you take it to a scrap yard and get caught, plus the scrap yard can get a fine. Plus, they’re not worth anything — the real old ones were brass or copper, but the newer ones are just stainless steel.”
Borough Mayor Garry Herbert, who took part in the 2019 ceremony honoring vets buried there, said in his “Mayoral Musings” column on North Penn Now this week that “the act itself is more disrespectful than the price of the markers.”
“Obviously, the marker helps us remember and identify those who have served our community and our country. But they do so much more than that,” Herbert said.
Markers allow later generations to track their history, learn about that veteran, and recognize their sacrifice to the community, Herbert added — something robbed from dozens in this case.
“These actions are desperate and despicable. Those who served with distinction and honor in our community deserve to rest in peace and be honored for their commitment to our nation. It is unconscionable to think that someone of any kind of integrity would even consider taking grave markers of any kind, but especially the grave markers of our veterans,” he said.
“It saddens me that I must share this information with our community, and it is frustrating that someone could be so incredibly disrespectful to any grave site, but especially to those who have served our country with valor. To the families of the graves that have been violated, the Lansdale Police Department will make every effort to find the person who committed this crime and have them stand before a judge to try and defend their unreasonable and disgusting actions. It is my hope that we can quickly replace the grave markers so that our history, our veterans, and their actions can continue to be honored throughout the year whenever someone visits our local cemetery,” he said.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Lansdale Borough Police Department at (215) 3681801.