Lost Grave Found
By Justin Tiemeyer || Contributing writer
6/22/2024
Robert and Ruth Lepley were Lowell residents in the 1940s, and they brought six children into this world. There was Betty (Jaarda-Ryan), Madeline (Hopkins), Lucy (Coleman), Harold Robert Lepley, Rose (Winright), and Lillian (Lowry). They were a hardy, healthy crew, with one big exception; Harold was born with hemophilia, which means that his blood would not clot normally. Today, folks suffering from hemophilia are treated by infusing their blood with the missing blood-clotting factors, but in the 40s, these treatments were not available. Patients relied on whole blood transfusions, and while the United States had collected blood since early in World War I, it was not uncommon for hemophiliacs to receive tainted blood transfusions. It was dangerous to be a hemophiliac in the 1940s, and as a result, Harold Robert Lepley died in 1944 at the age of three.
Robert and Ruth were not people of means. In fact, it is well-known among family members, who survived, that difficult time at that the Lepley family was quite poor, so when it came to burying young Harold, ‘their angel and their lamb,’ difficult decisions had to be made. They had enough money for either a cement vault or a headstone, and Robert insisted on a cement vault. Finding the grave without a headstone would not be a problem, after all, because Robert could never forget where he put his little boy to rest.
“Grandpa would always say, ‘It’s right next to the road,’” said Brenda Claypool, Robert and Ruth Lepley’s granddaughter by way of their daughter, Betty. On November 20, 2024, the Lepley family will hold, in reverence, the 80th anniversary of the passing of Harold Robert Lepley, but for much of the intervening time, the location of Harold’s grave has been a mystery. Robert and Ruth left Lowell to live in Grand Rapids, Belding, and eventually, Greenville. Robert, Ruth, Betty, and Lillian eventually joined young Harold in the sweet by and by, and it fell upon Brenda and her aged aunt, Madeline, to find the grave with no headstone. Robert could never forget where Harold was laid to rest, but he brought all of that knowledge with him to his own grave.
Hope was all but lost when Brenda placed her Aunt Madeline at Maple Ridge Manor in Lowell. She was back in Lowell, which made research a bit easier, but the leads had an 80-year head start, and most of them had gotten away. Madeline made a call to the City of Lowell and got a hold of the city clerk, who referred her to Nancy Roth, Assistant to the cemetery sexton. However, Roth did not have any good news for the searchers at the time. She had scoured the city’s records and found nothing. For all intents and purposes, that was it. Madeline’s last best hope to find her brother’s grave had just disappeared. Some mysteries, like those on TV, are solved much to the satisfaction of everyone involved in the investigation. Everything is wrapped up with a bow. This mystery, however, belonged, like so many, to the ages, or so they thought.
Six months later, Roth called back, and she had good news. She’d accessed funeral home records for an entirely different project, and there was Harold’s name. With the assistance of Oakwood sexton, Tom Lenneman, the group started poking around, quite literally, in fact. With the description from the funeral home, memories of Robert’s stories, and a poking rod, Lenneman went looking for Harold’s grave, and he would know where it was because of the cement vault Robert had purchased.
Lenneman explained that cement vaults were not common in the 1940s, and they were never used for babies and small children. Doubt had returned to the decades-long search. What if they had remembered incorrectly? What if Robert had not had the money to purchase a cement vault? Even with the best of directions, they would never know with certainty where Harold was buried, not without the vault. Lenneman continued to poke though, and he eventually hit cement. Exactly where Robert had described, “right next to the road,” Lenneman found the vault. A mystery 80 years in the making was solved earlier in 2024.
“He gave my aunt closure,” Brenda said. “We just can’t thank Nancy and Tom too much.”
At the beginning of June, the remaining family placed the headstone that Robert and Ruth could never afford, and for ‘their angel, their lamb,’ there was even pictures of an angel and a lamb side-by-side on the headstone.
Two Lowell residents stricken by the worst of poverty, lost their baby boy to an internal hemorrhage in 1944. They say the difference between tragedy and comedy, or joy and lament, in this instance, is where you end the story. Robert was illiterate, and Ruth had never received a proper education either, but they invested in infrastructure. In the case of Harold, who died before he could experience his parents’ steadfast dedication, that infrastructure was a cement vault, the only reason his grave was ever found. In the case of everyone else, of Betty, Madeline, Lucy, Rose, and Lillian, of Brenda and the other grandchildren, of all the generations to come thereafter, the infrastructure was a strong work ethic and a belief in incremental change over time. Robert may not have been able to read a newspaper, but he worked hard for King Milling Company, and some of his kids graduated from high school. Fast forward to today, and there are college graduates in the family, and more; a number of family members are currently pursuing graduate education, as well.
“I will tell you about the determination that each one of those girls had, that they themselves would never go through again, what they went through as children,” Brenda said. The missing was found, hemophilia can be treated, and prosperity was a possibility, but it all took determination. It meant never giving up, no matter how bad it got. Most of the Lepley family’s successes were blue collar successes, but they were successes,nonetheless. They built the road from then to now.
Madeline, or Aunt Mad, as Brenda fondly refers to her, has experienced a deterioration of her health in the past few years. She has been under hospice care since the beginning of 2024, and she rarely leaves her room. Lowell was the place where Mad was born, and she knew when she moved into Maple Ridge Manor, it would be the place where she would die, and now it was the place where she had finally found her missing brother, Harold.
“‘You placed me here for a reason, Brenda,’” Brenda recounted her aunt saying. “Our family came full circle.”
