Over the Memorial Day weekend, a number of Oceana County residents discovered the theft of several bronze memorial plaques from the gravestones of area veterans. Elbridge Township Cemetery reported eight separate headstones damaged from plaque theft, with social media posts and local reports turning up multiple other rural area cemeteries where similar incidents have occurred. Besides plaques, some veterans’ graves are also missing flag holders, which are solid bronze or resemble bronze.
According to Undersheriff Ryan Schiller, the Oceana County Sheriff’s Office believes that the vandalism is the result of opportunistic scrap metal thieves targeting the solid bronze, which can be cut up or melted down and sold locally for $3 per pound. Cemetery vandalism is not uncommon during the summer months, particularly around Memorial Day. As Schiller explained, the holiday "historically is when families take time out of their schedules to take care of and visit their loved ones.”
One such family member is Dave Hansen, who posted about the theft of his father-in-law’s plaque on the Hansen Foods Facebook page. The theft was discovered on Saturday, May 23, when Hansen’s wife, Leslie, and another family member visited Elbridge Township Cemetery to tend to the grave of her father, Benjamin E. Russell. While Russell’s grave had not been visited in several months, visitors to the cemetery earlier in the week reported nothing amiss, leading Hansen to believe the theft occurred the Thursday or Friday prior to Memorial Day.
Hansen asked in the post, "Who could be that broken as to desecrate a grave like that?” He is offering a $1,000 reward for anyone who could provide information leading to the prosecution of the perpetrator. The post has thousands of views and over 160 comments.
Hansen describes Russell as an incredible man who began his career as a merchant mariner before joining the U.S. Navy as a submariner in WWII. In the Korean War, Russell served as a tank recoverer. At the end of the war, he’d decided to make the military his career, working at the Detroit Armory, where he taught diesel engine repair.
It was primarily Korean and WWII veterans whose graves were vandalized in Elbridge, with the targeted graves in a wooded, secluded area of the cemetery, out of sight from the adjacent road. Elbridge resident Nancy Tate also visited the cemetery over the weekend to visit her parents’ graves and said she was surprised to see a crowd of concerned families checking in on their relatives.
While Tate’s veterans’ graves were spared, she expressed that “it just was hard seeing all my neighbors out there. A lot of them are older.”
Tate also knew Russell as well, which has made this entire situation worse for her considering her admiration for him.
When recalling his father-in-law, Hansen spoke about how sometimes younger generations “don’t realize [veterans] were just like them…I used to be the same, see an old guy, and not think about who he used to be.”
Undersheriff Schiller assured that sheriff’s deputies will be patrolling cemeteries and looking out for suspicious persons or vehicles and urged that “if anyone visits a loved one's gravesite and finds that this has occurred,” they should contact Central Dispatch and file a report by calling 231-869-5858.
