Wishing for the Graveyard

I've been busy this past week doing volunteer work for the alumni office of the little college I attended. I am their Friendly Internet Stalker, searching for chronically lost alums, updating addresses of the living, and verifying the dead.

We've been working on the classes of 1950 through 1959 trying to get the database clean. Before 2003 nobody had the time, tools or technology to keep it up-to-date. Some of the addresses are the alum's parent's addresses from back in the '50s...General Delivery, Toad Suck, AR. (Yes, there really is a Toad Suck, Arkansas.)

It's a hoot to call up little old ladies and gents and yak with them about anything and everything. I've found friends of my parents and grandparents, distant cousins, and quite a few colorful characters. Every life is a story and even these 'ordinary' people have some pretty interesting tales to tell.

Back when I first started doing this three years ago, the folks in the alumni office thought I was some kind of a miracle worker. Alas, I've taught them all my tricks so they can easily find folks themselves using a few on-line resources. Now they send me just the hardcore, chronically lost.

It takes about eight hours or so per alum digging around through various ancient records, putting two and two together, then calling some distant relative to verify information for these folks. Usually this list includes the most common names (which are much harder to find): Mary Smith, Margaret Wilson, Bobby Jones, etc. I praise the saints when I get the odd duck like Violet Genevieve Argonaught Brokowski. Easy.

Anywho, I'm looking for a Robert L. Johnson, (June 1917 - ???), deceased. We don't have a date of death or a social security number for him. Obviously my counterpart in the alum office didn't find him in the on-line Social Security Administration List of the Dead, a.k.a. SSDI. We try to verify that everyone marked dead is actually dead. With the very common names sometimes the wrong John Smith got auffed in years past.

I find our guy in the cemetery in the town where he last lived. Matching name and exact date of birth, died in 1977. There isn't a spouse listed in his record so I go looking to see if I can determine if he was married. Lots of alums marry alums, so finding the correct spouse means clearing up two records.

His headstone is a single, but in the little cemetery there is a listing for Evelyn S. Johnson, "loving wife of Robert L. Johnson". She has a double headstone with Robert L. Johnson, Jr. (1958-1988). Yay!, got her.

Evelyn died just two years ago so I look up her old address and phone number. It shows her in the household along with Robert L., no age (which usually means that person is deceased.) I cross reference that to the current phone listings and it shows up still as an active number under Robert's name.

It's not unusual for a wife to leave the phone in hubby's name long years after he dies, so that part didn't bother me much. What bothered me was the number was still active two years after everybody was seemingly dead. Hummm.... So I call the number.

Lo and Behold! Robert L. Johnson answers the phone. We chat for a little bit as I explain who I am and what I've found. He is not our alum because he was born in June 1919, not June 1917, plus he graduated from a different college. He confirms that Evelyn is his recently departed wife and she is buried next to their son.

He seems like a sweet little guy but very lonely. He heaves a sigh and says that it's supposed to be the husband who dies first and leaves the wife with all the insurance payoffs and pension funds; that no man should outlive his wife and son. He fills his days with volunteer work with Alzheimer's patients, allowing their caregivers to have a day off every now and then.

I'm busily taking notes and I say softly, to myself really, "So it's *your* wife in the cemetery....(scribble, scribble, scribble)....buried next to *your* son....(scribble, scribble)....but it's not *you* in the cemetery....."

He sighs again and says, "Yeah, but I wish it was."